PATRICK QUENTIN

SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES

Copyright © 1957 by Patrick Quentin

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

- Chapter 1

- Chapter 2

- Chapter 3

- Chapter 4

- Chapter 5

- Chapter 6

- Chapter 7

- Chapter 8

- Chapter 9

- Chapter 10

- Chapter 11

- Chapter 12

- Chapter 13

- Chapter 14

- Chapter 15

- Chapter 16

- Chapter 17

- Chapter 18

- Chapter 19

- About Patrick Quentin

- Bibliography

Suspicious Circumstances

I

I was in Paris when Norma Delanay died.

I’d decided to write a novel, and when I told Mother, she said, ‘A novel, Nickie dear? At nineteen? Well, why not? The young eye — so penetrating. Go then to Paris. That’s where the best books get written.’

Pam and Gino and even Uncle Hans protested that if I could write a novel at all it would come out just as well in Southern California and Pam did a lot of muttering about ‘wild extravagance’. They didn’t get anywhere, of course. No one ever got anywhere with Mother. The more the idea of my being a Parisian writer registered with her, the more it slayed her.

‘The Left Bank… La Vie de Bohème ... A little démodé, but so good for a growing boy…’

Next morning she drove me herself to the L.A. International Airport, wearing lounging pajamas and a Royal Pastel mink coat. She cried a little, kissed me with great warmth and signed autographs for awe-struck air hostesses.

‘Be good, Nickie darling. Write a lovely book and write it quickly, because I will miss you. But do not put in descriptions. The dome of Sacré Cœur floating like a bubble over the rooftops… Old women with mittens selling chestnuts.... So boring.’

Two days later I was installed in a suitably Vie de Bohème apartment looking out on the Luxembourg Gardens, which one of Mother’s innumerable French admirers had put at my disposal. The next week, at the Café Flore, I met Monique, who agreed with Mother that the best books were written in Paris but was convinced that they only got written by men who had girls like her to inspire them.

It didn’t take her long to have me equally convinced because Monique was about as inspirational as a French girl can get, and in a couple of days I’d forgotten my naive belief that the only attractive females were California redheads. I’d also, I’m afraid, rather forgotten about being a novelist because with Monique there always seemed to be so many other more relaxing things to be inspired towards.

That was the set-up then when Norma Delanay died. Monique and I were on our way to some highbrow cinema to see a revival of one of Mother’s early Hollywood movies. Mother that season — or rather Early Mother — was nosing Garbo out as the Culture Heroine of the Left Bank. A man, passing us on the Rue Vavin, was reading a Paris-Soir. Over his elbow I saw the French headlines. They said :

NORMA DELANAY PLUNGES TO DEATH IN LUXURIOUS BEVERLY HILLS HOME

I wanted to buy a paper and find out more about it, but Monique was scared of being late for Mother’s movie.

‘Miss a moment of the Great Anny Rood just because some trashy ex-sweater-girl becomes dead? Norma Delanay? Who cares a fig for Norma Delanay except perhaps elderly serving-maids in the American motels?’

I wasn’t an elderly serving-maid in an American motel, but I cared. Not deeply perhaps because at Hollywood parties ever since I could remember, Norma Delanay, who had represented sex to the American Public from 1940 to '46 or so, had always reached a dry martini moment when she’d sway around swimming-pools and clasp me to her sweaters and coo, ‘Anny Rood’s little Nickie. Isn’t he cunning? I could just eat him up!’ But even so, she was the first person I’d ever known who had died and, as an author, I felt it ought to mean something. Besides, Norma and her husband had recently been intimately involved with Mother and I had the uneasy feeling it was going to affect me some way or other.

But Monique won about not buying a paper, and soon we were sitting in a wildly gilded and statued movie-house which looked as if Madame Dubarry had used it for giving orgies, and were watching Mother in Desert Wind — the first movie she’d ever made in the States. Eighteen years ago it had been, a year after her one and only French movie had sky-rocketed her to fame from — let us face it — the gutter. I’d been exactly sixteen months old at the time.

I’d never seen Desert Wind. Mother wasn’t one of those celebrities who force you to admire their former triumphs. She lived too much in the present. While Monique was oohing and aahing about ‘bone structure’ and ‘divinity of movement’ and nuzzling against me, reminding me how very satisfactory my new life was, I looked at Mother and thought about Norma Delanay plunging to death.

It was a rather uncomfortable sensation because the Mother on the screen, deciding whether to become a nun or to go on being a wealthy woman of mystery from Belgrade with a sexy singing voice, was so absurdly like the Mother I had left a month ago at the L.A. Airport. Mother didn’t believe in growing older and her quality had never changed, not even the inimitable Was-it-Swiss? Was-it-Balkan? accent. Whatever it was that made her a legend had always been there from the beginning, and each time the great swooning eyes with their interminable lashes were ruining the hero’s chances of a better life, they also seemed, out of their corners, to be giving me that well-known ‘This-is-for-your-own-good-dear' check up.

‘Nickie, are you sure you shouldn’t be home finishing a chapter?’ ‘Nickie, are you sure that girl is suitable?’ And, most unnerving of all, ‘Nickie, how can you be thinking such boring thoughts about Norma?’

Because what I was thinking about Norma was indeed boring by our household’s standards, according to which ‘divine’ meant anything Mother had endorsed and 'boring' everything else. I was thinking that, when I left Hollywood, Norma’s producer husband, Ronnie Light, had fallen headlong in love with Mother. There were all sorts of reasons, involving a dreadful English actress called Sylvia La Mann, which kept it from being Mother’s fault, but there it was. And, since Norma’s career was moribund and her only remaining asset was being Ronnie’s wife, having her husband drooling over her 'oldest and dearest' friend wasn’t something she’d feel particularly festive about.

If there had to be a reason for her ‘plunging to death in her luxurious Beverly Hills home’, Mother seemed as good a one as any other.

Oh dear, I thought, envisaging appalling scandals, and Mother went on looking at me keenly from the screen while she decided not to become a nun after all but to return tragically to a life of pleasure.

Monique, who had been made very pro-American by the movie, insisted that the only culturally suitable next step was to go to a St Germain ‘cave’ where a ‘fabulous’ American colored trumpeter played 'le jazz hot'. I managed to buy a paper on the way and, in the dimmest light in history, while the trumpeter trumpeted and dozens of girls and boys in blue jeans, all looking exactly alike to me, drank cokes and hurled each other around in what seemed to them to be Rock and Roll, I read about Norma Delanay.

My languages were all right because Mother’s career had always been globe-girdling and, during my formative years, I had been dropped, off and on, into almost every type of educational establishment ranging from a lycée run by French monks in Saigon through a British Public School called St Cecil’s to a humiliating Dancing and Fencing Academy in Santa Monica. In fact, I’m the most International American I know, not only by schooling but by blood since my father was a Czech aerialist who broke his neck in a trapeze fall before I was born, while Mother was sort of Swiss. That is, her parents had been Swiss acrobats but had given birth to her in a trunk in Rumania or Bulgaria or one of the more embarrassing countries, thus making her Swiss or Rumanian or Bulgarian, whichever she happened to feel like being at the moment.

The Paris-Soir informed me that Norma’s plunge to death hadn’t been as melodramatic as I had supposed from the headlines. She had merely ‘slipped and fallen while descending the stairs, thereby breaking her neck’. I felt a distinct sense of relief. Heartbroken wives, planning to end it all, did not, it seemed to me, hurl themselves down their own staircases. It was delightfully easy to believe that Norma had just ‘slipped and fallen’, for Norma had in recent years seldom descended or ascended or even proceeded on the level without being saturated in gin.

The article was continued on an inner page, but I had to dance with Monique then because she was pouting out her lower lip and looking like a French girl who felt she was losing her inspirational quality. Eventually I got back to the Paris-Soir. On the inner page, after giving a brief outline of Norma’s undistinguished career, the article concluded as follows:

‘The death of Miss Delanay arrived at a particularly tragic moment since her famous Independent Producer-Director husband, Ronald Light, was just about to star her in a six million dollar Cinemascope spectacle based on the life of Ninon de Lenclos.’

I could hardly believe my eyes. Ronnie, the astute, realistic Ronnie, gambling away six million bucks on a hopeless comeback for Norma? Who had been twisting whose arm?

Monique, sitting next to me drinking coke, was pouting her lower lip again. ‘Mon Dieu, read, read, read. Is that all the American writers do when they are with their girlfriends? Read the journals?’

‘Who’s Ninon de Lenclos?’ I said.

‘Ah, mon pauvre petit barbarian, Ninon de Lenclos was one of France’s greatest courtesans.’

‘How old was she?’

‘Old? She was ancient. At ninety she was still having lovers.’

‘At least it was type-casting for Norma,’ I said.

Then a very horrid thought struck me. Mother, who hadn’t worked for a year, wasn’t exactly 'hot' in Hollywood. She wasn’t washed up, of course. You can’t wash up a legend. But even legends, when they get to be a little too legendary, don’t necessarily find lovely six-million dollar spectacles growing on avocado trees. Now that Norma had so conveniently plunged, who would be a natural to play this nonagenarian grande amoureuse? Who indeed?

Control yourself, Nickie, I thought. Smother that writer’s imagination. Norma fell down the stairs. Anyone can fall down the stairs. But for a moment I felt peculiar.

‘I can see it now,’ I blurted. ‘Mother in the tallest wig since Norma Shearer played Marie Antoinette. Did Ninon de Lenclos yodel? Mother can yodel too.’

Monique tapped her foot and with a great deal of snapping of eyes said, ‘Mother, Mother, Mother. How I detest the Great Anny Rood for giving her so charming son the Mother Complex.’

By then Monique of all people ought to have known that even if I did have a sort of mother-complex it certainly wasn’t the type that interferes with your love-life. But Monique was the kind of girl it’s a pleasure to reassure about almost anything, and after half an hour of that heavy French public smooching, we were both about as far away from a mother-complex as anyone could get. French girls, however, never become completely carried away. Long after I’d forgotten it, Monique still remembered she was living with one of those European-type dragon aunts who sit up clanking keys until their nieces come home as unblemished as they went out. So I took her home.

It was late when I got back to the Luxembourg Gardens, but I wasn’t at all tired. Although I went to bed, I didn’t fall asleep and insidious Californian thoughts started to creep back. They were negative, I knew, and should be suppressed. But the trouble with my love for Mother, as opposed to everyone else's, was that years ago I’d decided she was capable of anything.

Mother, I thought… Ronnie… Norma’s plunge… Ninon de Lenclos.

The sleep I fell into was uneasy.

Monique arrived next morning to make breakfast for us. That was another of the wonderful things about her. What American girl, even the most offbeat California red-head, would think about crossing Paris virtually at the crack of dawn to prepare croissants with honey and coffee, even though the coffee was rather odd and somehow involved boiling an egg?

While I was taking a lukewarm shower with the egg-coffee smelling delicious, there was a bang at the door. I heard Monique arguing with someone, then, just as I came out of the bathroom in my robe, she appeared in the bedroom with a cablegram.

I opened it. It said:

COME HOME IMMEDIATELY MOTHER

I looked at the cable. I looked at Monique. I was feeling dozens of things, but mostly I was feeling rage. Leave Monique? Now? Just when Life was Beginning? I tossed the cable to Monique and, running to the door and yelling down the stairs, caught the telegram man. He had a cable blank. On it I scribbled ferociously:

RETURN ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE NOVEL AT CRUCIAL STAGE

I ran back to Monique.

‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to let her get away with this.’

We flung ourselves into each other’s arms. Suddenly all the gaiety was gone and it was sweet and sour, tender, romantic, tragic. We forgot the coffee. It burnt through the pan, and the croissants, which Monique had been warming in the oven, became charcoal, filling the apartment with smoke.

We were leaning out of the windows, coughing, a few hours later when there was another bang at the door and another cable.

It said:

TERRIBLY SORRY DARLING MUCH TOO COMPLICATED TO EXPLAIN BUT RETURN TONIGHT IMPERATIVE. LOVE MOTHER

I cabled back a meek ‘Okay’ and took a plane that evening. In the dreary waiting-room at Les Invalides, Monique

and I clung together.

‘Chérie.’

‘Chéri.’

‘Monique.’

‘Nickle.’

‘Oh, Monique, I’ll be back. I swear it. Somehow I’ll wangle it. Somehow…’

‘Oh, chéri.’

‘Oh, chérie.’

They called my bus then. All the way to Orly the memory of Monique’s inspirational face looming through the dirty bus window haunted me.

But, by the time I was half way across the Atlantic, she began to seem rather far away and Mother began to seem terribly near. Surely, I thought, Mother would never have sent those cables unless there was some very real crisis. Norma and the plunge?

Suddenly all the pro-Mother side of me which couldn’t be smothered for long came rushing to the fore. Mother was in trouble. She needed me.

My thoughts got more and more and more ‘boring’.

2

There was no one to meet me at the L.A. Airport — no Mother, no Pam, not even Gino, who, after all, was supposed to be a chauffeur. I waited around uneasily for a while and then took a taxi to Beverly Hills, where we were currently living in an Italian-type mansion plus servants, loaned to Mother by a writer-producer who was off making a life of Nehru or Buddha or Marco Polo or someone Oriental in Burma. For years Mother had been intending to buy a house of her own but she’d never got around to it because, wherever we went, dearest friends were constantly pressing palazzos and villas and beach houses on her and she always felt it would hurt their feelings if she refused.

In the taxi I devoured a paper I’d bought at the airport, but there didn’t seem to be anything in it except the announcement that Norma’s funeral would take place with all the trimmings that afternoon at five, and a line in Lettie Leroy, reading: ‘What scandal might break at any minute about what international celebrity?', which might have been ominous or might merely have been a fill-in.

When I got ‘home’, I found I hadn’t enough money for the taxi because I’d forgotten to cash any travelers’ checks at the airport. I told the taxi to wait and ran into the house.

In the marble foyer which had probably been imported from Europe in individual crates, a girl I’d never seen before was sitting by the statue of a naked gentleman with a beard who loomed in a goldfish pool. She was talking into a telephone on a long extension cord.

‘No,’ she was saying. ‘I’m terribly sorry but Miss Rood isn’t available right now… Yes, yes, of course She’s going. Norma Delanay was her dearest friend. Yes, yes, of course She’s heartbroken.’

I went up to her. She was young and very smooth with very green eyes and startling red hair falling to her shoulders in one of those Carole Lombard type hairdos which someone had revived. I noticed all this about her with cool clinical detachment, for what were smooth, green-eyed California red-heads to me now? If anything, I was prepared to dislike her for representing something which was forever dead and buried.

When she slammed down the phone, I said, ‘Give me five bucks, please.’

She turned the green eyes on me in a long calm look. ‘What is this? A stick-up?’

‘I’ve got a taxi waiting.’

She gestured to the statue. ‘Since you have your own transportation, why not highjack Buster here? You could probably peddle him to MGM for twelve-fifty.’

I knew I disliked her then. There’s nothing more exhausting than a smart girl. I said, ‘Do we have to indulge in all this brilliant repartee? I’m Anny Rood’s son.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘In that case you come under petty cash.’

She took a five-dollar bill out of her pocket-book. The telephone rang again. I paid off the taxi and came back with my suitcase. The girl had hung up and was feeding the goldfish from a can of fish food. She looked up again, appraising me with a brisk skepticism which might once have represented a challenge but which now, thanks to Monique, was for the birds.

‘So you’re the divine son who’s writing a divine book in Paris?’

I ignored that. ‘Where’s everyone?’ I said.

‘If everyone means your mother, which it inevitably does, She’s upstairs.’ She smiled brightly. ‘And since you’re clearly so overwhelmed with interest, you’ll be thrilled to hear I’m a new addition to the group. Delight Schmidt, the secretary’s secretary, the goldfish’s friend.’

‘Delight!’

‘At the year of my birth, Delight was considered a cute name in the lower lower class circles of San Bernadino in which I moved. Want to make something of it?’

When I’d left, the girl who had helped Pam had had perpetual sinus and a bedridden father and had been called Bernice.

‘What happened to Bernice?’ I said.

‘Bernice got the boot two weeks ago. I’m a brand-new broom.’

The phone rang.

She said into it, ‘Good morning, Miss Rood’s residence ... No, I’m afraid she isn’t … No comment. No comment at all.’ She dropped the receiver and watched me again. ‘I adore this household. I’ve always wanted to say No Comment into a phone.’

I knew all the calls were about Norma, but I wasn’t going to show worry in front of one of the here-today-gone-tomorrow females who were constantly streaming through our lives. Certainly not in front of this Aren’t-I-The-Cute-One? little number.

There was a matching goldfish pool on the other side of the hall. Delight Schmidt got up, still clutching the telephone, and, with the extension cord trailing behind her, started wandering towards the second pool.

‘My feet!’ she muttered. ‘These fish will be the death of me.’

No sale, lady, I thought. I picked up my suitcase and ran upstairs.

We changed houses so often that I was apt to get lost in them. But I located Mother’s room because the door was half open and I saw pink wall. Whosever house we were in for however short a time, the first thing Mother always did was to have her room made over entirely in pink. In fact, with the reckless generosity for which she was famous, she invariably put thousands of dollars’ worth of improvements into her dearest friend’s house which, I sometimes felt, was one of the reasons why everyone was so enthusiastic about loaning their real estate to her.

I paused a moment outside the door, feeling the way I always felt when I’d been away from Mother for any length of time, a mixture of excitement and uneasiness as if I were a nine-year-old who had probably done something wrong.

When I went in, Mother was on the bed. At least it was technically a bed. It was about the size of a badminton court and covered with newspapers and letters and telephones and boxes of flowers and a breakfast tray. Somewhere in the middle of it all, tiny but dominating every acre of pink satin spread, lay Mother. She was fully dressed in black slacks, a pink blouse and scarlet-framed glasses with rhinestones, and was curled in a ball reading a movie script. She glanced up rather crossly when she heard someone, then, seeing it was me, dropped the script, pulled off the glasses and smiled a blissful smile.

‘Nickie — darling.’

She stretched out both her arms to me. There was so much bed between us that, even by stretching my own arms full out, I wasn’t anywhere near her. I swung myself on to the bed and she grabbed me, hugged me and then pushed me away with her iron grip on my shoulders, studying me from those huge, swooning eagle eyes.

‘My poor darling. You hated to come home, didn’t you? Return Impossible. Novel at crucial stage. What was it, dear? Some divine little girl?’

I might have known Mother would have smelled that out, but, demoralized as I was, I still had enough wit to realize it would be fatal if she got her teeth into Monique at this stage of the game. Instead I launched a strategic counter-attack.

‘But why didn’t you tell me what it was all about? What’s happening anyway?’

‘But, Nickie.’ Mother’s eyes did that widening bit so that the white showed all around her pupils. ‘Don’t they know in France about poor Norma? This afternoon is her funeral. You couldn’t have missed her funeral.’

I looked at her, trying to fathom what was going on in her mind. I don’t know why I ever bothered because it never got me anywhere. Had I been dragged from Monique’s arms merely because Mother saw me as an essential prop for her funeral characterization? ‘Anny Rood, stricken with grief, is supported by her son from her old friend’s grave?’

‘So that’s all?’ I said, prepared to be relieved but indignant too.

‘All?’ Mother looked shocked. ‘That is what you call it — all? How can you be so cynical? You young — you are all wild, jungle beasts. Norma was our friend. Our dear old friend. And when a friend falls down the stairs and breaks her neck, that is not — all. That is tragic. Remember that, you heartless, cynical child.’

‘I just thought…’ I began.

‘Thought — what?’

‘That there might be the stink of the world. I mean, if the columnists or the scandal magazines latched on to the fact that Ronnie is potty about you and…’

I’d expected another explosion but, as always, I’d got Mother quite wrong. She merely smiled a musing smile. ‘Potty! What a peculiar word. You picked it up at that boring English school. Perhaps it was a mistake to send you there. Those terrible purple and black caps.’ The smile became sentimental. ‘Darling, Ronnie isn’t potty about me. If you were older, you’d realize that relationships between men and women don’t always have to be lurid and dreary. What Ronnie feels for me is just a sweet, perfectly natural affection.’

‘Are the columnists old enough to see it that way?’ I said.

‘And gratitude,’ said Mother, looking modest.

‘For busting up his little fling with old Who-Is-Sylvia?’

‘For rescuing him, darling. Honestly, that poor Ronnie - he was quite, quite out of his depth. We all know he sees himself as a Big Casanova just because he has an occasional kicking up of heels with some dumb little starlet and, Norma being the way she is, who could exactly blame him? But this - it was like a fleecy lamb with a tigress. That Sylvia La Mann — She’s the most dangerous female in Hollywood, particularly now that her contract has lapsed and there are no more Texas tycoons swarming around and She’s positively struggling for her existence. If someone hadn’t done something, she’d have had Ronnie whisked through the divorce courts up to the altar and out to the nearest agent with a ten-year starring contract all ready to sign in her wedding bouquet. No, dear. You know how I hate to meddle, but someone had to do something.’

The improbable thing about all those noble sentiments was that they were perfectly genuine. Mother — or at least most of Mother — was the least selfish person who’d ever walked the face of the earth. She would go to incredible lengths to help her friends. If they were sick, they were deluged with beef-broth, personally prepared by her own dainty hands; if they were in financial difficulties, they were deluged with checks; if they were unhappy with their wives, they were deluged with sympathy and sage advice.

The hooker was that Mother, who had devoted all her energies to being a Sex-Goddess on the Silver Screen, had never learned to approve of Sex in Real Life and refused to admit that she herself could be a complicating factor in her good works. When men like Ronnie, for example, who were supposed to be taking sympathy and sage advice, started frothing at the mouth over her, she turned the blindest of eyes and went serenely on reuniting them to their Lawful Mates.

She was giving me the full Madonna. ‘Darling, luckily, I was able to rescue him. It wasn’t easy, but I flatter myself I’m more than a match for Sylvia La Mann. And while I was about it, I thought it would be a shame not to do something about Norma too. Poor Norma, I said to Ronnie, of course she drinks and of course She’s tiresome at times and, if you’re very careful, I don’t really see why you shouldn’t revert to a starlet or two every once in a while. But why not try to be a bit more patient with Norma? Think of her situation. You, the great producer with all the banks at your feet, while she… What is she anymore? Darling, she used to have a quality as that lovely Sweater Girl. Why not give her a chance? Find some great big picture for her and let her try to be a star again.’

‘Then the Ninon de Lenclos bit was your idea?’ I asked.

‘Yes, darling, it really was. Of course, the script’s been ready for months. Poor deluded Ronnie had been hoping to fish Garbo out of her hole with it. But I told him he might as well try to fish Ninon de Lenclos herself out of her tomb. Give it to poor Norma, I said. Get her a strong male star and she’ll be divine. And if she is the slightest bit bulgy, who’s going to see through all those hoops?’

I looked at her almost with awe. ‘I might have realized you were the only living creature who could have persuaded Ronnie to throw away his reputation and six million lovely bucks like that.’

Mother frowned. Any remark which could conceivably be construed as unkind was automatically condemned by her. ‘Really, how can you say such dreadful things? Norma would have made a lovely Ninon, I’m sure, and anyway Ronnie got Brad Yates to play opposite her.’

Of all the red-hot male properties in Hollywood, Brad Yates was currently the hottest. Mother herself, I knew, had been dying to act with him. She picked up her scarlet reading glasses and twirled them.

‘And to think that She’s dead just when her new career was ready to sky-rocket. What a tragedy! And for poor Ronnie. You should see him. He’s heartbroken, quite, quite shattered.’

I tried to visualize Ronnie being shattered about having escaped from this renovated married bliss which Mother had thrust upon him.

‘Are you sure he’s shattered?’ I snapped.

‘Of course he’s shattered,’ snapped Mother. ‘For better or worse, Norma was his wife for over ten years. I won’t have you being so cynical. It’s dégôutant.’

There were, of course, just as many ‘boring’ thoughts to be thought as ever, but I was exhausted by all my anguished anxieties on the plane and the bed was very soft. I rolled on to my back and felt voluptuous. I loved Mother’s beds. I loved being with Mother, too. I’d almost forgotten how soothing it was to be bullied and scolded again.

‘Mother.’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘How did it happen?’

‘What happen, Nickie?’

‘Norma, of course.’

‘Happen?’ echoed Mother with a slight change of voice. ‘How does it happen that you fall down the stairs? You fall down the stairs.’

‘Was Ronnie there?’

‘Where else would he have been?’

‘Did he see her plunge?’

‘Of course he didn’t. He was way off, down by the pool. Way, way off.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they’d eaten at the pool house. That’s why.’

‘Then what was Norma doing in the house itself?’

‘She went back to get something. She’d been going back to get something every twenty minutes. A book, her glasses, a coat. Ronnie says what she was really going back for was gin.’

‘Why didn’t she have some with her?’

‘Because Ronnie had made her swear to be good so she wouldn’t bulge in the movie. But you know how it is with the drink habit.’ Mother looked temperate. ‘She just kept going back getting more and more bulgy and the last time she was gone so long that Ronnie went to investigate. And there she was. The gin bottle must have been hidden in her bedroom. She’d stumbled coming down the stairs and — hoopla.’

Since my father had been an aerialist and Mother as a destitute widow had started her own career assisting Uncle Hans in a vaudeville yodeling act, ‘hoopla’, I suppose, was a legitimate occupational word for her. It didn’t seem to strike quite the right note for Norma’s tragic plunge, though. It was a bit too airy. I never trusted Mother when she was airy.

‘So that’s how it happened?’ I said.

‘That’s how it happened.’

‘There wasn’t anyone else there at the time?’

‘Really, darling, all these questions. How morbid you are like a ghoul.’

‘I mean, at least the servants were there?’

‘It was the servants’ night to be off.’ Mother rolled around on to her elbows so that she was gazing down at me, giving me the full eagle-eye treatment. Then she looked deeply shocked. ‘Nickie, you’re not suggesting they’d think Ronnie did something?’

‘Well,’ I said.

‘Monstrous child, what a terrible mind. Where could you have got it from?’ For a moment she went on being thunderous. Then she forgave me. ‘My poor Nickie, you’ve been worrying. How pathetic. All the time on that plane — terrible, worrying thoughts. Of course the police investigated everything. Dozens of them, the very best ones. And of course they decided it was an accident. There! Does that satisfy you?’

It did. And it was a lovely feeling, being satisfied. There it was — an accident. The police said so.

‘Dear Mother,’ I said.

‘Darling Nickie.’

She patted my cheek and got up from the bed, crossing to the dressing-table. Mother’s dressing-tables were like her pink walls. They were always the same — about a mile long with a mile of mirror above them and with several tons of cosmetics which she scarcely ever touched unless she was really fixing herself up for something epoch-making. She had picked up a brush from the inevitable cluster of photographs which went everywhere with her. Countless celebrities had given her likenesses signed with enthusiastic messages, but the only ones she kept out were pictures of the Inner Circle, a picture of me as a baby in Warsaw or Oslo or Barcelona, wherever I was born, a picture of Pam, a picture of Uncle Hans, a picture of Gino, and a picture of my father.

She started brushing her hair.

‘Heavens above, it’s ten-thirty already and I swore to Ronnie I would be there by ten.’

I lay on the bed, watching her contentedly, thinking how nice it was, after all, to be home and that everything was fine because, once I caught Mother at a strategic moment, I was sure I’d be able to wangle a trip back to Paris and Monique. Then a thought came which, even then, might have been considered faintly uncomfortable.

‘Mother, who’s going to play the part?’

‘What, darling?’ She turned from the mirror. Her face which could register everything was also wonderful at registering nothing. Now she had on her ‘nothing’ face. ‘What did you say, Nickie? I didn’t hear.’

‘I said — who’s going to play Ninon de Lenclos now?’

Mother still held the silver brush against her hair. For a moment she went on registering nothing, then serenely she gestured with the brush to the script lying next to me on the bed. I picked it up. I read:

PROPERTY OF RONALD LIGHT PRODUCTIONS

ETERNALLY FEMALE

A MOVIE SCRIPT BASED ON THE LIFE OF

NINON DE LENCLOS

I looked at it, feeling quite peculiar again. Mother came to me and sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘It’s rather a nuisance, darling, but I simply have to do it. Not just for Ronnie, but for poor Norma. She would have wanted it that way, I know. That’s what I said to Ronnie when he begged me, literally begged me with tears in his eyes to save the production. Norma would have wanted it, I said.’

3

I knew, of course, that Mother had incredible gall and the hide of a tyrannosaurus. If she hadn’t had both, she’d never have become the Great Anny Rood. But even for Mother, this seemed a little much. My expression must have been as peculiar as my feeling, for she gave me a very sharp look.

‘Well, what is it now, foolish boy?’

‘What are they going to say?’ I managed.

‘Who? Who? Who say what?’

‘The columnists. Hollywood. Everyone. Norma plunging to death. Ronnie potty about you. You grabbing off the fattest part since the Ten Commandments before Norma’s even cold in her grave.’

‘Grab!’ Mother brought the brush down on my hand with a stinging slap. ‘Haven’t you listened to a word? Ronnie begged me, I said; he beseeched me, and when I finally consented, it was only for Norma’s sake — as a tribute to Norma.’

‘I see,’ I said.

Mother clutched my shoulders and shook me once very fiercely. ‘You Nickie. Are you so young, so callow that you cannot appreciate a tribute?’ She forgot me then and started looking beautiful and dreamy. ‘This picture is not going to be just another picture and I am not going to be just another actress playing a part. The whole thing will be a monument to the memory of a very dear friend.’

I gulped.

‘Already I have made Ronnie understand I will sign the contract on no other terms. First will come the titles - Ronald Light Presents Anny Rood and Brad Yates in Eternally Female — The music will soar up; then suddenly silence — dead silence — and my voice, very soft, will say, Eternally Female, the story of a great lady of France dedicated in all reverence to the memory of a very great Lady of Hollywood — the late Miss Norma Delanay.’ She paused a moment, looking deeply moved; then a seraphic smile lit up her face. ‘There, Nickie, isn’t that the only way to do it?’

‘It’s lovely,’ I croaked, thinking again with awe : No one but the Old Girl could have thought of that. It’s terrible, but she’ll be able to brazen it out that way. Dear Mother.

She was being brisk now, doing a lot of emphasizing of points with the brush. ‘And then, of course, there’ll be other tributes. I will give interviews. I will write articles for the fan magazines. Anny Rood and Norma Delanay, A True Hollywood Friendship. It’s the least I can do, for, after all, haven’t I known poor Norma forever? Don’t you remember, years before I came here, when we were both absolutely unknown and she was being a nude in the Folies Bergère, married to Roger Renard, that pathetic little French camera-man with the beret basque? Don’t you remember how we used to dream our dreams, sitting together in countless little Montmartre cafés? Don’t you… No, of course you don’t, you poor child. You were a mere baby at the time. Even so, there it was. Anny Rood — Norma Delanay. How long ago it seems.’

She was lost then in a mawkish and I’m sure hideously distorted reverie of her girlish intimacies with Norma. Gone was the latter-day reality of the slobbish ex-sweater girl with the swollen face who had made everyone miserable and plunged down the stairs after too many nips at the hidden gin bottle. Mother could do that. She was her own most credulous public. That’s why she would be able to get away with it. Even Lettie Leroy was going to be racked with sobs before Mother was through with her.

Slowly, like those ladies in picture-frames who come to life in Mother’s sort of vaudeville, she stirred. Then she was with me again. She gave a little rueful laugh.

‘Heavens above, here I am chattering with you while poor Ronnie…’

She ran back to the mirror and started brushing her hair again, a dynamo once more.

‘Where’s Gino? Oh dear, everyone’s late today. Yell for him, Nickie, darling. Go to the head of the stairs and bawl.’

I started to scramble off the bed but at that moment Gino, looking dazzlingly dark and handsome in a fancy new chauffeur’s uniform, showed up at the door. He didn’t see me, he just saw Mother at the mirror. He grinned at her.

‘Ah, que bella signorina! Step on it, Anny, kid. It’s almost eleven.’

Ten years before, Mother, on one of her 'Discovering These Our Great United States’ rambles, got a flat under a giant redwood in Yellowstone Park and a Forest Ranger fixed it for her. Incredibly, the Forest Ranger turned out to be Gino, the youngest member of my father’s aerialist team, who had been stranded in the States when a circus folded in Seattle. Mother had fallen on his neck in an orgy of sentiment and nostalgia, and the instant she discovered he didn’t like being a Forest Ranger very much, she got him to resign right there and then and drove him straight home with her, where he’d been ever since.

I don’t know what you’d call his function. He certainly wasn’t just chauffeur and bodyguard, for Mother took him everywhere with the rest of us, even to the chicest parties. People who didn’t know Mother were apt to be ‘sophisticated’ about his position in the household, but that was only people who didn’t know Mother.

Gino, I guess, like Uncle Hans and Pam and me, was just another object on which Mother could lavish her overwhelming but unswerving devotion.

Mother, seeing him in the mirror, spun around.

‘You,’ she said. ‘You’re hours late. I could kill you.’

‘Okay, Ninon de Lenclos.’ Gino noticed me then and his white grin broadened. ‘Hi, kid. Look who’s home. Those Paris babes been taking care of you?’

‘There was some little girl,’ said Mother. ‘I know it. Poor darling Nickie, he’s quite bereft. Nineteen, really! What an age! Gino, dear, my coat, the chinchilla… Nickie, the script. I’ve got all sorts of very important ideas for changes. If we’re going to make something of this movie, Ronnie’s got to get down to work. It’ll be good for him anyway. It’s fatal to mope. Quite fatal.’

Chattering, fussing, Mother rushed herself and us around, getting ready. Soon all three of us were going down the stairs, arm in arm. Mother was being executive about the funeral.

‘You, Gino, do not wear your uniform. To be a chauffeur is absurd. You were a friend. Pam’s off buying something for herself and a black suit for Nickie. Just at the last minute, I remembered, Nickie dear. The black suit you got when Mr Silberman died at Warner Brothers had pleats in the pants, didn’t it? Pleats are terrible — démodé.’

‘What about you?’ I said.

‘Me?’ Mother shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Some little simple thing. I will find something.’

That meant she had been making some unfortunate chic dress-maker’s life hell for the last two days.

We’d reached the hall by then. Delight Schmidt, still holding the telephone, was back sitting by the goldfish. Mother ran to her and embraced her.

‘Good morning, dear. Has anyone called?’

‘Oh, no. No one,’ said Delight Schmidt. ‘Just people — if reporters are people.’

Mother beckoned me over. ‘Delight, this is my precious Nickie. Nickie dear, you’ll adore Delight. She’s a divine girl. I found her at MGM in the property department, putting sequins on the behinds of horses. Now She’s come to live with us. She’s heaven. So amusing. Not a bit like that boring Bernice.’

My heart sank. So this wasn’t just another secretary’s secretary from the Agency. This terrible know-it-all redhead was one of Mother’s crushes. Mother was okay on men, but with the exception of Pam, quite disastrous on females.

Mother was nuzzling her arm around the redhead’s waist. ‘You see, Nickie? You see how divine she is?’ She patted Delight’s arm. ‘Darling, you must be particularly sweet to poor Nickie. He’s feeling the teensiest bit blue. Some tiny little escapade in Paris.’

‘Mother!’ I broke in, seething with indignation and embarrassment.

But Mother merely drew the two of us even closer together with an awful knowing look.

‘Darling children, I’ve simply got to dash to poor Ronnie, but you two young things amuse yourselves. Play tennis or something. It’s absurd for secretaries to be working all the time.’

She looped her arm in mine and dragged me out with her on to the porticoed front steps. Gino was already in the Mercedes. It was borrowed too. People with cars felt about Mother the way people with houses did. It belonged to an actor who was working in London.

‘It'’ bliss having you home- sheer bliss.’ Mother kissed me tenderly. ‘Darling, you don't really want to go back to Paris, do you?’

‘But, Mother…’

‘Now, darling, I know it seems like the end of the world, but you’ll be surprised how differently you’ll feel in a minute. We’ll find something wonderful and amusing for you to do here. That lovely Dancing and Fencing Academy again, perhaps. Meanwhile, be a dear sweet boy and go and play with Delight. Such a sad life. An orphan. So brave.’

She got into the car then and waved while Gino drove off.

I went back, fulminating, into the hall. The brave orphan, twirling the telephone extension cord, smiled a high voltage smile.

‘Tennis anyone?’ she said.

‘Is Pam back yet?’ I asked.

‘No, she isn't.’

‘Where’s Uncle Hans?’

‘Down by the pool.’

That was my escape gimmick. I turned away but she put a hand on my arm. ‘Aren't you going to amuse yourself with

me the way your mother told you to?’

I glowered.

‘Oh, I know,’ she said. ‘The tiny little escapade. But after all the tiny little escapades in Paris and I’m here and although I hate to be the one to have to point this out to you, it’s dreadfully misguided of you not to investigate me. I’m vastly amusing, a wonderful restorative. You'd be staggered at the things I can do.’

She made a few enormously sexy South American dance steps.

‘See? That, for example. But that’s only the beginning. I can feed goldfish with a frenzy second to none. I can put sequins on the behinds of horses. But your mother already told you that. I can…’ She paused and the lashes — they weren’t as long as Mother’s but they were long — lowered over the green eyes. ‘What else can I do? Oh, yes, I can a tale unfold whose lightest word, I venture to state, is going to harrow up your soul.’

As I looked at her, part of me — only a miniscule, shameful part — began having the old familiar ‘red-head’ sensation, but that merely redoubled my fury. At all costs I was going to ignore this stooge of Mother’s with the iciest of dignity.

‘Well?’ she queried. ‘Don’t just stand there. Don’t you want your soul harrowed up? I don’t go around harrowing up just any boy’s soul, I’ll have you know. This is something very special for you because I adore your mother and because I’m prepared to adore you almost like a sister and, frankly, because if I don’t unfold my tale to someone other than the goldfish, I’ll go stark, staring mad and eat my own foot.’ She looked pitiful. ‘You wouldn’t like that, would you? You wouldn’t like to see the secretary’s secretary eating her own foot.’

She was smiling again. I wished the smile had been just a little less infectious.

Reluctantly, I said, ‘Okay. Harrow up my soul.’

‘It’s about Guess-Who? The lovely late Norma Delanay and her Plunge.’

I had hoped it would be anything but that.

‘What about it?’ I said.

The telephone rang. Still watching me under the lowered lashes, Delight Schmidt picked up the receiver and cooed into it in a phony musical voice.

‘Hello, hello? … Oh, good morning Los Angeles Times … No, no. No she isn’t … No comment … You’re welcome.’

She put the receiver back on the stand.

‘So!’ she said. ‘Well, here we go. On the night Norma plunged, your mother was having a cozy little dinner at home here with Pam and Uncle Hans and Gino and me. With no lovely borrowed servants because it was the lovely borrowed servants’ night off. If anyone, the Chief of Police, for example, were to ask, that’s what they’d be told.’

‘Well, what about it?’ I said.

Delight Schmidt looked enigmatic. ‘I’m looking enigmatic,’ she said.

‘For God’s sake, go on.’

‘Ah, that’s better. I can see the soul harrowing up just a teeny bit at the edges. Hold on while the tale unfolds. On the night that Norma plunged, your mother wasn’t having a cozy little dinner at home here with Pam and Uncle Hans and Gino and me. I was having a cozy little dinner by myself, and your mother and company were having a cozy little dinner chez Ronald Light and Norma Delanay.’

I forgot she was Delight Schmidt and a menace of epic proportions. I forgot everything except the harrowing of my soul which was indeed going on full spate.

‘Ronald Light phoned that evening,’ she continued. ‘I took the call myself. I didn’t listen in, of course, because I’m a glorious ethical secretary’s secretary. But around six o'clock they all piled into the Mercedes and, just before they piled, your mother swooped on me like a gorgeous bird of paradise and pecked my cheek and said, ‘Darling, if any vastly amusing calls come in, we’ll be at Ronnie’s all evening.’ And then, around eleven, they all came scurrying back. I was in my room reading a deathless work of literature to improve my mind, but I heard them. And next morning your mother — how I adore her! — pecked me again and said, ‘Dearest Bernice (she still gets me mixed up every now and then) just remember that you and I and Pam and Uncle Hans and Gino had a cozy little dinner at home last night and never stirred out of the house. You remember that?’ And I said, ‘Yes, Miss Rood, I remember that vividly.’ And she enfolded me in a tender embrace, reeking of Joy, and said, ‘Darling, call me Anny.’ ‘

She sat down on the edge of the pool, gazed into the rather murky green water and said, ‘Goldfish, I love you.’ Then she looked up at me sideways. ‘I haven’t told a soul,’ she said. ‘I’ve stood squarely behind my employer. I have a beautiful nature. But unhappily I’m also a blabbermouth of the world. I knew that if I didn’t confide in someone instantly, it would all pop out like a champagne cork at the most embarrassing moment for everyone.’

She got up again and did the undermining sexy South American dance steps with the telephone.

‘There,’ she said. ‘The Dance of the Relieved Blabbermouth.’ She stopped dancing. ‘Nicholas.’

‘Nickie,’ I said.

‘I shall call you Nicholas. It’s more respectful. Nicholas, what do you make of that?’

I didn’t say anything.

‘Look who plunged down the stairs,’ she said. ‘Look who’s playing Ninon de Lenclos.’

Suddenly I felt panic. ‘You’re not going to tell anyone?’

‘Didn’t I make it plain that I adore your mother? Didn’t she save me from the rumps of MGM stallions? I’ll keep my secret to the grave. But, Nicholas, what do you think?’

It would have been so much better if I hadn’t been all screwed up with bits of the old ‘red-head’ sensation and longings for Monique and a whole raft of ‘boring’ thoughts. The only thing to do at the moment seemed to be to retreat behind my iciest dignity.

‘No comment,’ I said.

‘Oh, Nicholas.’ She pouted. ‘How can you be so dreary? Think of all the gloriously appalling things that might have happened. Think…’

Luckily, the telephone rang then. As I made a hurried escape out into the garden, with dozens of emotions flapping around like butterflies inside me, I could hear her fruity telephone sing-song again.

‘Hello … hello … you are connected with the residence of Miss Anny Rood…’

4

As I walked through the bougainvillea and the cactuses and the succulents and the palm trees towards the free-form swimming-pool, I saw Uncle Hans, in his inevitable blue serge business suit, sitting under a beach umbrella, playing chess against himself.

He happened to look up and noticed me. Uncle Hans, being Swiss, believed that Europeans went on being European regardless of what happened to them. Since in Europe you kiss male relatives, I kissed him on an area of baby pink skin under the genius mop of white hair.

Uncle Hans wasn’t really my uncle; he was Mother's, the only relative to have emerged from the Rumanian-Bulgarian—Swiss mists of her past. He’d been the greatest yodeler of his day and had taken Mother into his act when she was down and out. But, reasonably enough, yodeling was a thing which eventually made audiences very angry, so poor Uncle Hans’ career came to an end and Mother, with all her loyalties going full blast, had brought him with her when she first came to conquer Hollywood. Ever since, he’d spent his time writing the longest and most definitive book on the History of Yodeling and playing chess against himself, which left him rather absent-minded in all other walks of life.

He didn’t have to be absent-minded; he was in fact the brightest of us all when he wanted to be, but he had to be interested before the great brain swung into operation and usually he just wasn’t interested.

‘Hello, Uncle Hans,’ I said.

He smiled his sweet, elsewhere smile. ‘Hello, Nickie, so you are back.’

Part of me had decided to rise above Delight Schmidt. But another — rash — part of me was desperately eager to prove she’d been lying. I thought about pumping Uncle Hans but decided it would be a waste of time. Better to wait for Pam.

Pam Thornton, who had been imported a few years later than Uncle Hans, had been Mother’s greatest buddy in her yodeling days and had had a dog act called Pam and Her Pals or Pam et Ses Copains or Pam und Ihre Freunde according to the country. But Pam was also a British Colonel’s Daughter and British Colonels’ Daughters, however emancipated, never quite get over the Playing The Game bit which is drummed into them on the hockey-fields of Schools For Young Ladies in Sussex. If there was anything dreadful to hide, she would do her best to keep it from me, but her best just wouldn’t be good enough because we loved each other and deep down inside she would know that lying to me wasn’t Playing The Game. I was sure of that.

I stood watching Uncle Hans. He had completely lost interest in me. Rather sadly he took a red bishop with a black knight. The pool was dazzlingly blue in the morning sunshine; the palmettos creaked in a slight breeze; a scarlet hibiscus flopped on to the cement at my feet. Glorious Technicolor, the whole thing. I wished I didn’t feel so peculiar. I longed to be back with Monique boiling an egg for the coffee.

And then, to my intense relief, Pam appeared hurrying through the cactuses. Tray, the terrible dog which she’d trained to keep her hand in, was struggling behind her, dragging a large package down the flagstone steps by a string in his teeth.

I ran to her and kissed her.

‘Nickie.’ She smiled at me with sensible affection, her sensible glasses rather askew, her sensible hair all over the place. ‘What heaven to have you back. Tray’s got your funeral suit. Do try it on this minute. There’s going to be a barrage of TV cameras at the church door, and the Old Girl will hit the roof if her son is flashed from Coast to Coast looking like a potato sack. I remembered about no pleats, thank God.’

She grabbed my arm and started pulling me around to the opposite side of the pool from Uncle Hans where there was a pool house built like an African kraal or a Haitian kraal or some sort of a kraal. Tray staggered after us with the package.

Pam went on chattering about the funeral and then, with a sudden change of voice and a glance which I’d always called her ‘trying it out’ look, she said, ‘The Old Girl’s told you She’s playing Ninon, hasn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘It isn’t official, of course. Nothing’s been signed, but it seems to be settled and it’s saved our lives.’

‘Saved our lives?’

‘I didn’t tell you before you went away. I didn’t tell anyone, not even the Old Girl herself until a couple of weeks ago, but I was quaking in my shoes. You know how she squanders — and almost invariably on other people? Well, my dear, what we’ve got left from the fabulous career of the fabulous Anny Rood is not one bloody cent. Oh, thousands of dollars here and there, but thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of debts, there and here and everywhere. And until this came up, there hadn’t been a single offer that amounted to anything. Long live Ninon de Lenclos, I say. If it wasn’t for her, we’d all of us have been begging crusts from door to door.’

I felt even more peculiar. How peculiar was it possible to feel? We had reached the pool house then.

‘Tray,’ said Pam, ‘give dear Nickie his funeral suit.’

Tray dragged the frayed, collapsing package right up to me, flattened himself on the cement and pressed back his ears. When I bent to pick up the package, he growled and wouldn’t let go of the string.

‘Tray!’ said Pam.

He growled again and bared his fangs but finally let me get it without biting my finger to the bone.

‘Really!’ said Pam. ‘What a ghastly dog. Punishment Tray. Four somersaults.’

That really wasn’t a punishment for Tray because somersaults were the one thing he liked to do. He somersaulted away backwards with great enthusiasm. I went into the changing room and put on the black suit, thinking even blacker thoughts. Then I went back to Pam in the bar part of the pool house. The house-owner’s decorator had gone mad on voodoo drums. You sat on them and used them as tables and, I suppose, if life got quite unendurable, you played them. Pam was sitting on one with a drink.

Pam with a drink before lunch? That proved something was terribly out of joint, I thought. Pam was a staunch believer in that British ‘sun-going-down-on-your-sobriety’ tenet.

The suit apparently was okay. Pam peered at it and tugged at it and decided it would do.

She was still fiddling with the trouser cuffs when I said, ‘What were you all doing at Norma's?’

I’d decided the sudden attack would be the most telling, and it paid off. Pam’s face went that shade of magenta which is, apparently, exclusive to British Colonels’ daughters who have been caught out almost not Playing The Game.

‘Nickie, what on earth are you talking about?’

‘Why were you all there when she plunged?’

Pam looked at me and then flashed a demoralized glance across the pool to Uncle Hans, who was serenely minding his own business.

‘Really,’ she blurted, ‘sometimes I despair. Who told you? Not Uncle Hans? Not Gino?’

‘Delight Schmidt,’ I said.

That knocked her back on her heels. ‘Delight? How did she know?’

‘She says that when you all went off that evening Mother told her to transfer calls to Ronnie's. She also says that the next day Mother drenched her in charm and told her to keep her mouth shut.’

‘But… but… Why didn’t Anny tell me? And Delight of all people. What do we know about her? She’s only been here five seconds.’

‘She swears She’s not going to tell anybody,’ I put in dubiously, not having a very strong feeling about the validity of Delight Schmidt’s oaths.

Pam took a gulp from her glass of gin and tonic without ice which was her revolting conception of a drink.

‘I could cut my throat.’

‘It’s as bad as that?’

‘Of course. What if the press get on to it? Or the police?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Oh, Nickie, I suppose I’ve got to now.’ She looked agonized. ‘I always wanted to anyway because you and I are as one, but the Old Girl made me swear not to breathe a word.’

‘Needless to say. You should have heard her just now lying herself blue in the face.’

‘Now, Nickie,’ said Pam, inevitably standing up for Mother. ‘You know it isn’t lying with the Old Girl. She’s the most wonderful woman in the world. It’s just that she didn’t want you to be worried when there wasn’t any need. But, my dear, if you knew what really happened — it was ghastly, absolutely ghastly.’

I leaned forward on the voodoo drum, which wobbled precariously.

‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Tell me it all from the beginning.’

And this is what happened on the night of the plunge. At least, it’s what I gathered from Pam’s somewhat chaotic description.

5

The first ‘ghastly’ thing, according to Pam, was Ronnie’s passion for Mother. Apparently, until Operation La Mann, Ronnie’s idea of womanhood had been restricted to the Normas and the little starlets, and the shock of being exposed to Mother in all her selfless magnificence was far too much for him. After Sylvia La Mann had finally been hurled into Outer Darkness, Ronnie just tagged around after Mother looking like a besotted St Bernard, and what made it even more ‘ghastly’ was that Mother refused to notice she was being worshipped. Deep in her second crusade, Operation Norma, she went serenely on being Norma’s oldest and dearest friend, arranging little intimate get-togethers, for the three of them so that Norma and Ronnie could ‘find each other’ again and then, on top of it all, forcing Ronnie to give Norma the Ninon de Lenclos role.

He hated the idea, of course. Addled with passion though he was, he still had enough sense to realize that Norma playing Ninon de Lenclos was the quickest method ever devised for turning six million dollars into dross. But Mother plugged on and on until, one day about two weeks after I’d left for Paris, she swept triumphantly home to Pam with the great news. Norma was to play Ninon. She would renounce the bottle; she would reduce; she would take Seventeenth-Century French Deportment lessons from a divine little Hungarian whom Mother had found in Santa Monica. They would start shooting in six weeks’ time.

‘Think, Pam. All that trouble with Sylvia turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Now dear Norma has the chance of a whole new career.’

Poor Pam, whose nerve-ends by then were raw and bleeding, snapped, ‘Wouldn’t it be more constructive for a change to think about a whole new brilliant career for the One, the Only, the Incomparable Anny Rood?’

And, exasperation giving her courage, she poured out the whole truth of our financial status. This didn’t daunt Mother at all. She merely drifted to the piano and played a tune with one finger — probably the terrible bit of Grieg she always played.

‘Dear Pam, there’ll be plenty of time to think about ourselves when we’re quite, quite sure that Ronnie and Norma are happy again.’

After that, she refused to see Ronnie for almost a week, although he was calling her every five minutes. ‘My job is done, Pam dear,’ she said, but, instead of looking for work, she just barged around on another spree of good deeds. First, she flew to Las Vegas to be godmother to the baby of an immensely important gangster called Steve Adriano who doted on her and owned half Las Vegas. After that, she hooked up with Billy Croft, the boy genius of the musical-comedy world, and took a busload of Mexican orphans to the San Diego zoo, where she was photographed on a camel with the smallest and most orphaned orphan perched precariously on the hump in front of her.

It was excruciating for Pam, who never for a moment forgot we were teetering on the lip of the bankruptcy crater.

And then — four days ago — Pam and Mother were in Mother’s bedroom one evening answering fan mail when Delight switched Ronnie’s call through to them. Mother took it.

‘Yes?’ she said. ‘What, dear? … No, no, no. I’ve never heard anything so outrageous … What? No, no, of course I wouldn’t dream of it. No, wait. Don’t do anything until I come. We’ll all come. ... They’re out? Well, I’ll make supper. She’s got to have some supper. Do you have cheese? … Good, good … No, dear, I said, no, no.’

She put down the receiver.

‘Pam darling, we’re all going to Ronnie’s for supper. His help is out and I’ll make a divine fondue. All of us. You, me, Uncle Hans, Gino.’

Pam knew it was a crisis because of the divine fondue. When Mother got her Swiss Hausfrau jag on it always boded no good.

So she said, ‘What’s happened?’

And Mother, looking as if Danny Boy was being played very softly on a Hammond organ, said, ‘Norma’s drinking again. Think of it. With everything réglé for her new career, drunk! Ronnie says She’s swollen up in the face. Ronnie says she looks like a hoot-owl. Ronnie says that even I would have to agree that Ninon de Lenclos can’t be played by a hoot-owl. And…’ She paused. ‘This is the worst part. You know how emotional he is. He’s in such a rage that he says he’s through with her, through as a man and through as a husband and through as a producer. She’s all yours, Anny, he said. You can present her to the San Diego Zoo as the only sweatered hoot-owl in captivity. And furthermore…’ Here, at her airiest, she picked up one of Pam’s replies to a fan letter … ‘he begs me, he beseeches me to play Ninon instead.’

Pam, of course, was in a transport of delight. ‘How marvelous! All our troubles are over.’

But her heart sank when she looked at Mother because Mother was all lovely compassionate friendship and reproach. ‘Darling Pam, you don’t imagine I accepted. Ninon is dear Norma’s one chance for a new life. I would no more snatch the part from her than I would snatch a crust from an orphan.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Pam, ‘all you’d do with an orphan is to give it a ride on a camel.’

Mother rose above that. ‘At least Ronnie hasn’t told her yet. So she need never know. We must go, all of us, and make her realize how self-destructive this gin habit is. We must go, all of us, and make Ronnie see once again where his duty lies.’

So there it was. By six o'clock they were all, including Tray, jammed into the Mercedes and hurtling off to save poor Norma from the self-destructive gin habit.

It was a fiasco from the start. Norma, deep in the gin habit, was the one who happened to open the door. Indeed, said Pam, she was swollen in the face and everywhere else too. She stood weaving in the front hall by a huge Juan Gris which Ronnie had just bought, with the huge staircase winding up behind her as if at any minute Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in top hats were going to swirl down it doing the Piccolino.

And she said, ‘Why, look who’s here. The Legend. Hi, oldest and dearest legend — do me a favor, will you? Take your familiars, go borrow a swimming-pool — if there’s anyone left in Hollywood who’ll lend you anything, which I doubt — and go jump in it.’

Mother, being Mother, just beamed and tried to enfold her in a fond embrace. Ronnie, looking distraught, hurried up then.

‘Norma,’ he said. ‘I told you to go to bed.’

‘Bed!’ said Norma. ‘Off hand, I’d have thought that was about the last place in the world you’d want to find me. Beds are for the Who-Is-Sylvia-What-Is-She’s of this world and for the Little Anny Roodys.’

And then she fell flat on her face and passed out.

Ronnie and Gino carried her upstairs and laid her out on a bed. Then they all, including the cheese, went down to the pool house because Mother preferred the chafing dish down there. The atmosphere, apparently, was highly charged to say the least of it, Uncle Hans and Gino and Pam being hangdog, Ronnie rather high himself and in a tizzy, torn between hopeless passion for Mother and rage with Norma, while Mother, in an apron with Scotties all over it, bustled in and out of the kitchen, chattering, being gay, enlisting aid, making charm and saying, ‘Dearest Norma, she’ll be all right again the moment she gets some food inside her.’

Pam said she found herself thinking of Norma’s stomach with all the gin and the melted cheese writhing together inside and it gave her the screaming mimis.

After about an hour of it, Ronnie could stand it no longer. ‘Anny,’ he said, ‘listen to me. You’ve got to let me get rid of her. She can’t play Ninon de Lenclos. Ninon de Lenclos is a historical monument in France. If Norma plays Ninon de Lenclos, the French will declare war on us five minutes after the premiere. Anny, please, please, Anny, you play it. I’ll pay you anything. The biggest salary you’ve ever got, plus a percentage. Anny…’

But Mother just bustled and did fatal things with her eyelashes, raising and lowering them like Venetian blinds, and patted his shoulder.

‘No, Ronnie darling, poor Norma is your wife and my friend. We must help her. She’s unhappy, insecure. It’s up to us,’ etcetera.

And Ronnie groaned and obviously he could hardly bear it because the eyelashes were doing such things to him and he wished he was dead.

It was about eight-thirty when finally Mother came out of the kitchen again and said, ‘Pam darling, it’s all ready. Run up to the house and get Norma. She’s had her little nap by now.’

Pam was, of course, terrified at the prospect of getting Norma and, as it happened, she didn’t have to because she showed up then. She was still weaving, apparently, but she was a little more with it. She made it past the edge of the pool and peered at them all under hooded, hoot-owl lids. Then she gave a terrible melodramatic sniff and clutched her hand against her sweater.

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘what is this divinely familiar fragrance? Can it be that the Legend is delighting us with yet another of the inimitable brews from her old Swiss cauldron? A tangy, zestful, cheesy tit-bit guaranteed to corrode the intestines of even a William Tell? Why don’t you yodel, darling, too, and garland your hair with sprays of edelweiss?’

Norma’s flow of invective was really her strongest point and only Mother could have gone on from there. But she did, of course, and they all got dainty striped napkins and salads and relishes and hot bread. Then she brought out the fondue in the huge steaming copper chafing dish and personally scooped out the first portion and carried it over to Norma.

‘Here, Norma dear, you must keep up your strength. You’ve got your career to consider now.’

And Norma looked at the plate of fondue and then looked at Mother. ‘Thank you, darling,’ she said, ‘but if I want to drop dead, I’ll do it my own way. Being a cooking fatality doesn’t appeal to me.’

And then, with an awful lurch, she got out of the Finnish chair she’d slumped into, swung at the plate of fondue with her hand and sent it splashing all over the blue and white Puebla tiles where Tray, who apparently had been surprisingly good up till then and should have known better, started lapping it up. By then, Pam said, she wasn’t a hoot-owl any more, she was one of those terrifying owls with ears which swoop by night on their prey.

‘Okay,’ she said and she flourished an arm like Mark Antony inflaming the Plebs in the Forum, ‘The time has come to make a speech. The time, the place — and the girl, if indeed she can be called a girl.’

Ronnie jumped up and shouted, ‘Norma.’

She ignored him and repeated, ‘The time has come for a speech. Speech. I have a philandering husband. Okay. He philanders from coast to coast, even stooping so low as to philander with a British-type so-called actress by the name of Sylvia La Mann, which is philandering more or less at its crummiest level. Okay. For all I care, he can continue to philander with almost anything in and out of skirts. But at one point I draw the line. Here is my line. I will not have my husband philandering with the oldest living motion-picture actress next to Clara Kimball Young and furthermore I will not have the oldest living motion-picture actress coo over me and be a spotless angel and nuzzle me with little friendly nudges and stuff me with lethal Swiss goodies out of the honeyed sweetness of her heart when all the time this oldest living motion-picture actress, be she Bulgarian, Rumanian, Swiss or Eskimo, is sneakily, schemingly, underhandedly, Swissishly trying to steal my husband, who is a bum anyway, who is …’ She swayed … ‘who is furthermore…’

They had all been sitting, paralyzed, looking at her. Then suddenly Ronnie snapped. Ronnie, who was wildly temperamental, was always snapping. He clutched at his hair and screamed.

‘Enough. I won’t. I won’t. I won’t. I’ve had enough. I won’t.’ He flung out his finger at Norma. ‘Consider yourself fired as Ninon de Lenclos; consider yourself divorced as a wife; consider yourself, as far as I am concerned, the last woman on earth.’

He swung around to Mother then. ‘Anny, dearest Anny, don’t pay any attention to this sweatered serpent, this oomph-owl. Take the part, I beg you, I implore you, I beseech you — take the part.’

And then, to Pam’s utter astonishment, Mother made the switcheroo of all time. Pam thought it was the insult to the fondue that did it, because Mother had a very Swiss feeling about her fondues. If even Mr de Mille were to criticize them, he’d be her enemy for life. In any case, she just stood looking at Ronnie, then very slowly she turned on Norma a long, reproachful glance.

‘I have tried,’ she said. ‘As heaven is my witness, I have tried for old time’s sake to be a good friend to you, Norma Delanay. But now at last I realize there is no one — no one in the world — who can help you. I wash my hands.’

She turned back to Ronnie then, doing the washing-of-hands bit. ‘very well, Ronnie dear. This is all my fault. I urged you to do this for Norma against your better judgment. I see now that I was wrong. And the least I can do, to show you how truly sorry I am, is to take the part.’

Pam’s hopes surged up all over again, but they subsided almost instantly because of Norma. Giving her greatest interpretation to date of the Double-Crested Long-Eared Screech Owl, she lurched towards Mother and then stopped dead.

‘So,’ she said. ‘Not only my husband but my part. You steal not only my husband but my part. You steal…’

And Ronnie broke in, shouting, ‘Shut up. Terrible woman, you’re out, out, out, ultimately out. Shut up.’

And Norma got immensely grand then, Pam said. She clutched for the pearls around her sweater, missed them and then got them and elegantly crooked her little finger through them.

‘So this is the set-up with which we are now confronted. You will give my part to Anny, will you?’

‘Yes,’ said Ronnie.

‘And you will divorce me, will you?’

‘Yes,’ said Ronnie.

‘Hoh,’ said Norma. ‘You? Divorce me? Although it seems to have escaped your attention, there happens to be such a thing in the divorce laws as adultery, which little thing you happen to have been committing every hour on the hour ever since I became your bride. By the time my lawyers have compiled a list of adulteresses, which will make a stouter volume than the Manhattan Telephone Directory, we will see who’s divorcing whom. And furthermore there is a little thing in the divorce laws known as Community Property. If there is to be any divorcing going around, you will find that this also will figure largely. Half of everything, half of your great fat fortune, half of Ninon de Lenclos, half of that lovely Juan Gris if I have to saw it in half myself, half, in fact, of everything except this delicious Swiss cheese fondue which is all, all yours.’

She made a swoop at the chafing dish and would have hurled it at Ronnie if poor Pam hadn’t got to it first and clung on for dear life. Although she missed out on hurling the chafing dish, Norma was still glaring at Ronnie.

‘But in spite of all this,’ she said, ‘you will be interested to know, my fine-feathered husband, that there is going to be no divorce — no divorce at all; neither is there going to be any change of casting in that sensational motion picture entitled Eternally Female — for the reasons above mentioned, and for the reason about to be mentioned which is as follows. Being your bride may not have been what is considered a bed of roses, but it has certainly been a liberal education in the various and sundry methods of being a crook and a fraud and a tax-evader. Just try to start something, just try, and what I will have to announce will be as music to the ears of the T-Men and the D-Men and whatever other of such type men there may be hanging around. Which about roughly, I would say, settles your hash. And now…’

While Ronnie turned various shades of green, she swung back to Mother.

‘And now,’ she said, ‘we come to the Little Alpine Flower, the Grandmother of all the Sirens, the Ancestress, we might almost call her, of Sex. If, my dearest and oldest Swiss Miss, Ronnie so much as hires you to interpret the role of an ancient sewing woman, let alone Ninon de Lenclos, you will find yourself figuring prominently on the list of adulteresses unless, of course, your lawyers can prove that you’re too old to do it. Not lawyers so much as personal physicians, I would say. And furthermore — you will be pleased to hear that if it is not decided once and for all at this very minute that I am the one to play Ninon de Lenclos, I am prepared to make this the most gala day in the long and respected career of a distinguished columnist friend of mine by the name of Lettie Leroy. At this very minute, I will go to the telephone and, once on it, I shall tell Miss Leroy not only all your mediocre, viperish schemes for stealing my husband and my part, but also a great many other things dating from a dim and distant past which would be enough to make that illustrious contemporary of yours, Queen Marie Antoinette of France, turn in her grave, head or no head. Right at this very minute, as you hear the signal, I will bend Miss Leroy’s ear so far back that she will be able to wear it as a hat.’

And then, while they all stood thunderstruck, even Mother, Norma glared at Ronnie again.

‘Okay, Buster, who gets to play Ninon now?’

Pam could see rage and panic warring in Ronnie. Then rage won.

‘Anny,’ he screamed. ‘Anny plays the part. Anny.’

‘She does?’ said Norma.

‘She does.’

‘very well,’ said Norma. ‘You have dug your grave — you can lie in it. Miss Leroy — here I come.’

And with an agility which seemed improbable under the circumstances, she had swept away and was lumbering back to the house.

It had turned into a Witches’ Sabbath. Pam was, of course, horrified, but at least she remembered that it was supposed to be her function to be executive and stave off disaster.

She said to Ronnie, ‘Does she mean it?’

He was the color of cigarette ash by then. ‘Of course she means it. Give her enough gin and she heads straight for the nearest columnist like a hornet to a pear.’ Then, recovering a bit, he added, ‘But it’s all right. Months ago I had a gimmick installed in the studio which cuts off every phone in the house.’

‘Then for pity’s sake, use the gimmick,’ Pam said.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes.’ And he hurried away in the opposite direction from the house down to the little studio he’d built the year before when he discovered he wasn’t only a great motion-picture director but also the most distinguished American abstract painter since Jackson Pollock. Since Pam knew the studio was much nearer the pool house than the house itself and it was almost certain he’d beat Norma to it, she felt she could relax a bit. But she was still in a cold sweat because, although she of course was convinced that Mother had behaved through the whole affair like a radiant angel of mercy, she realized that, once Norma had twisted the story around, Mother could come out looking like a cross between Messalina and a Robber Baron.

Meanwhile, Mother, who had risen above even this, had sailed back to the chafing dish and was bent enchantingly over it, scooping out portions for all of them as if they were merely having a cozy little bit of gracious living. For about ten minutes they just sat eating the fondue in total silence. Ronnie didn’t come back, neither did Norma, arid Pam was getting more and more jittery until at long last Mother put down her plate, delicately savored the last portion and murmured, ‘Good, very good. But perhaps next time just a soupçon more Kirschwasser.’

That’s all she said. Then the celebrated pensive frown started rippling her brow. That went on for a while, then she got up.

‘Darlings,’ she announced, ‘I am worried about poor Norma. She was horrible to me; she has a vulgar, evil tongue, but the poor thing isn’t happy. Heaven knows what she’s doing up in the house. Crying her eyes out, probably. I’ve got to go to her.’

‘Anny!’ cried Pam. ‘Please, for pity’s sake…’

But Mother didn’t pay any attention to her and sailed off towards the house. Uncle Hans and Gino and Pam just waited until, after about ten more minutes, a terrible thought struck Pam. Ronnie’s gimmick cut off all the telephones in the house, and Norma was far too drunk to be able to drive herself to Miss Leroy's. But what about the telephone in the gatehouse where the chauffeur lived with his wife? My God, she thought, if Norma had been smart enough to go down there, she’d have been bending Miss Leroy’s ear for a good twenty minutes. So she got up and ran like a hare with Tray at her heels back to the house and down the front drive to the gatehouse.

When she got there, she saw it was in total darkness. To make sure, she banged on the door and tried the handle, but the door was locked and the chauffeur and his wife were obviously off cavorting.

So that’s all right, she thought, and started up the drive again. Most of the lights were on in the main house. She had almost come up to it when, from inside, she heard Mother’s voice, calling,

‘Pam … Pam …’

She was only a few feet from the front door. She rushed to it. It wasn’t locked. She threw it open and plunged into the hall. And there was Mother standing at the foot of the stairs, yelling, ‘Pam, Pam …’ And there, in a heap at her feet, sprawled over an enormous vicuna rug, was Norma.

‘And, my dear,’ concluded Pam, ‘this is the most ghastly part of all. Tray got rattled and started doing back somersaults all round and around and around the hall.’

6

I had been sitting on the voodoo drum in my funeral suit listening with what is called ‘mounting tension’. Every now and then I’d broken in, but mostly I’d just let Pam talk. It had seemed less unnerving to have her tell it her way without too much interpretation from me, because most of my interpretations hardly bore thinking about. At one point Tray had come back with a red rubber ball which he tried, very unsuccessfully, to balance on his nose. Pam’s glass had been empty for some time. Now she held it out to me and I got up and made her another gin and tonic. I was so distraught that I forgot and put in ice and had to take it out again.

Across the blue, blue pool, in his blue, blue business suit, Uncle Hans noticed me moving, glanced up from his chess problem and called,

‘Nickie, is Anny home yet?’

Uncle Hans was never completely happy if Mother wasn’t around somewhere.

‘Not yet, Uncle,’ I said. I took Pam the drink. ‘What happened then?’

‘Ronnie,’ said Pam, gulping at the drink. ‘Just a few seconds after me, he came running in from the direction of the door that leads out towards the pool house. He saw it of course. While Tray somersaulted and somersaulted, Ronnie and I just looked at each other and at the Old Girl. Then the Old Girl said, ‘Ronnie, Ronnie, she is dead. The neck is broken. Just like Nickie’s father. I know.’ I hadn’t realized that the Old Girl had been there when your father fell, but I suppose she had. For a few moments, we just milled. Ronnie looked like a ghost but he was wonderfully calm. Then Gino and Uncle Hans came in.’

I swallowed. ‘But where had they all been?’

‘My dear, we had a terrible conference. It didn’t take long. Uncle Hans and Gino had stayed on at the pool house together until they got worried. When Ronnie went to the studio to cut off the house phones, someone had called on the studio telephone and held him up.’

‘And Mother?’ I said bleakly.

Pam’s nose looked pinched as if a pair of invisible pliers were squashing it. ‘Just exactly what you’d expect. The moment she’d reached the house, she’d swirled upstairs to Norma’s room and Norma was lying there on the bed. ‘I tried to comfort her,’ she said, ‘but she was quite impossible. She screamed at me like a fishwife and ordered me out of the house.’ So she left Norma lying there and went back downstairs and was just going out of the side door to join us again at the pool house when she heard the crash. She rushed back and there was Norma. Oh, dear, why couldn’t she have left Norma alone? But it’s so like the Old Girl. The milk of human kindness.’

Pam shrugged. ‘But there’s no point in wailing. There we were, just standing hopelessly, looking down at Norma. Then suddenly it all came over me - I mean the appallingness of the situation. If the Old Girl’s found here now! I thought, and my hair curled at the prospect. So I said to Ronnie, ‘Ronnie, we’ve got to get her out of here this very minute.’

Ronnie saw it, of course. For a moment I was terrified the Old Girl would go Noble and Law-Abiding on us, but she was meek as a mouse and I started dragging her towards the front door and the Mercedes. And then - thank God for Uncle Hans.’

She tilted her glass in the direction of Uncle Hans. ‘What did he do?’

‘He was a genius. You know how he can be at really crucial moments. He hadn’t seemed to be paying much attention all through the evening. He’d had a chess problem, I think. But when we were almost in the car, he suddenly said, ‘Anny, darling, if you want them to think we haven’t been here, what about the fondue? What about six dirty plates, six, no, I believe, five salads, five…’ We got the point then. As one, we dashed back to the pool house. Dementedly, with the Old Girl in the Scottie apron at the sink, we washed and dried and put away. It was ghastly! It only took about fifteen minutes but none of us said a word. Then we rushed to the Mercedes again and hurtled home. We never even discussed what Ronnie was going to say to the police. We just left him in the lurch.’

‘And . . .?’ I said.

‘It was all right. Ronnie told them what, I suppose, the Old Girl told you, and Inspector Robinson believed him. At least Ronnie’s sure he did. Right in their presence, Ronnie found a half-empty gin bottle hidden in a Vuitton suitcase in Norma’s closet. Whether she’d actually had it there or whether Ronnie was brilliant enough to plant it - who knows? But after that they didn’t seem to do much if any detecting.’

Pam sighed and patted her hair, which with all the patting in the world was always going to end up looking like a flycatcher’s nest.

‘So there we are. I’ve told you everything. Now for pity’s sake banish it from your mind forever.’

Banish it! I thought. You might as well ask the Ancient Mariner to banish the albatross from his neck.

‘But, Pam, how did it happen?’

Pam looked hysterical. ‘She fell. That’s all. After the Old Girl left her, she decided to come downstairs again and - she fell.’

‘But if she hadn’t fallen, Mother would never have got the part, would she?’

‘I - I don’t know.’

‘You know she wouldn’t. Norma had Ronnie where she wanted him. She…’

‘Oh dear,’ moaned Pam. ‘This is terrible of me. I know it’s just hysteria, but if you swear you’ll never breathe a word, I’ll tell you what I think could have happened ... just could, mind you. There’s not a shred of evidence, thank God, but ... ‘

I had to say it then or I would have gone out of my mind. ‘You think Mother pushed her?’

The moment I’d said it, I realized what an appalling error of judgment I’d made. For Pam the sun rose and set in Mother. She was often as exasperated with her as I was, but there was a huge difference. Pam’s loyalty, unlike mine, was as impregnable as the British Empire used to be. When she heard what I had said, she literally blanched. It was as if I’d suggested to a devout Moslem that Mahomet had been plastered when he wrote the Koran.

‘Nickie,’ she said, ‘you beastly, stinking, filthy little reptile.’

Although I was still disloyal enough, against all my inclinations, to have the most horrendous thoughts, I hated hurting Pam. I said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, Pam dear. I didn’t mean it. I — I mean, I just wanted to know what you thought…’

‘Nickie, oh, Nickie, what is this thing about you and your mother? Why can’t you see the point of her, see that she’s totally different from all the others? The Normas, the Sylvia La Manns — perhaps they could push people down stairs to get jobs. But Anny…’

‘Pam, I said I was sorry. Tell me. Please. What were you going to say? How do you think it happened?’

Pam could never stay mad with me for long. With an exhausted little sigh, she said, ‘Oh, well, when you’re nineteen I suppose you’re still half an animal. You can’t help it. I don’t see why I really have to tell you, though. Isn’t it obvious? I’m sure she fell. I’m absolutely sure. But if she didn’t… Ronnie knew she would be disaster in the picture. There were six million dollars at stake. And not only that. What if there had been something wrong with his Income Tax and Norma had known it? If she really had divorced him and turned him in to the Internal Revenue … that is … I mean, how do we know someone did actually phone him and hold him up all that time in the studio?’

‘So,’ I said, ‘you think it was Ronnie.’

She shivered. ‘I don’t think. I refuse to think. But if … oh, Nickie, forget I said it. Forget everything. The Old Girl’s playing Ninon. We’re solvent again. Just look at it that way.’

We sat gazing at each other. Ronnie? Possibly. But what about Mother, who had actually been up in Norma’s room? Pam had done her best to straighten me out, but I still wasn’t very straightened. I had an awful vision of Norma lurching towards the head of the stairs and Mother creeping stealthily behind her. Overwhelming nostalgia for Paris and Monique came again.

‘You’re sure it’s okay with this Inspector Robinson?’

‘It must be. It’s four days now and we haven’t heard a word.’

‘And the press? All those telephone calls.’

‘That’s just routine. The Old Girl and Norma were such buddies. Everyone knows that. That’s all it is. We’ll be all right. We’ve got to believe that. So long as it never comes out that the Old Girl was there…’

Both of us remembered at the same time and at the same moment both of us said, ‘Delight Schmidt.’

‘Where did she come from?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. She’s an out-of-work dancer. Anny found her at MGM and developed a crush on her after she got bored with Bernice.’

‘I know. But who is she?’

‘I haven’t the foggiest notion. Did she really say she wasn’t going to tell?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why did she tell you?’

Why had she? ‘I think, maybe, She’s trying to get chummy with me.’

Pam’s face lit up. ‘Oh, Nickie, how fortunate! Then you can handle her. Make up to her. Charm her.’

Terribly complicated thoughts were rushing through me, all of them more embarrassing than the next.

‘But, Pam…’

‘Why not? You and your red-heads. The Old Girl might have picked her especially for you.’

‘But — but, Pam, you don’t understand. It’s different now. In Paris…’

But Pam cut in very sternly, ‘Nonsense. This is a matter of life or death. You’ve simply got to keep Delight Schmidt quiet. From now on she’s your responsibility.’

At that very moment My Responsibility appeared from the house and came sashaying down the flagged path. For some reason I hadn’t noticed her body until then. To my dismay I saw it was as near perfect as made no odds.

She saw Uncle Hans first, then she saw us and smiled dazzlingly at me across the pool.

‘Anny’s back,’ she called, ‘and lunch is ready. So come and get it.’

I turned desperately to Pam. ‘Pam, please. I can’t. It isn’t ethical. It…’

‘Stuff and nonsense, dear,’ said Pam.

I dreaded going into the house because going into the house involved meeting Mother and I felt far too mixed up to face her. Part of me had the demoralizing notion that I would see the Mark of Cain scrawled across her brow; the other part had the equally demoralizing notion that she would pierce into my innermost thoughts with those terrible eagle eyes and thunder, ‘Harboring such suspicions about your mother? What have I given birth to? A monster?’

It was all right, though, for when we went in to lunch, she was exactly as I had seen her before she breezed off to Ronnie — gay, planny, noble, and flawlessly bone-structured. The funeral suit got the eagle-eye, but it passed.

‘Really, Nickie dear, how messy though — just to put it on over your other dirty clothes from the plane.’

The borrowed servants, like all the other borrowed servants, adored Mother and their adoration manifested itself in the most elaborate meals. Lunch that day was so gourmet that I thought I would choke on it — particularly when Mother announced that, since neither Ronnie nor Norma had any relatives, we were to be the family party and all go together to the church with Ronnie. To me this decision seemed to be the height of indiscretion and, to make it worse, Delight Schmidt winked at me through the hideous silver epergne which stood in the center of the table, while Mother went chattering on like that brook which babbles from haunts of coot and hern.

‘What time is it? Only two? Then we’ve still got hours and hours, but we can’t afford to waste a minute. Delight, dear, do you have your shorthand pad?’

‘Yes,’ said Delight Schmidt and unexpectedly produced a pad from under the table. She must have been sitting on it.

‘Good, good, what a thoughtful girl.’ Mother took little bird-pecks at her Poussin Marie Louise or whatever it was. ‘Now, let’s see. Where shall we begin? Photoplay, I think. We really ought to get into the July issue. Timing — so essential. Delight, dear, are you ready? Then take this down. Anny Rood and Norma Delanay dash A True Hollywood Friendship period paragraph I hate to think how long ago it was that lovely autumn morning in Paris when I first set eyes on little Norma Delanay period at the time comma Norma comma a lovely lissome blonde child comma … Lissome, darling. You can spell it?’

‘I can spell it,’ said Delight, ‘but it’s a cinch I can’t visualize a lissome Norma Delanay.’

‘Now, dear!’ murmured Mother reprovingly and dictated flowingly on. She had the whole article finished and had started on another one for Screen Secrets when the time came to go up and change.

I was the first down in my funeral suit. There was no one in the hall except Tray. When he saw me, he tried to stand on his head and failed, flopping over on to his back in a sort of unintentional somersault which then, his creaky brain being what it was, turned into a genuine somersault and then another and then another until he was lumbering dementedly around the hall. The one thing I wanted to see least in the world at that moment was Tray somersaulting. I yelled at him. It didn’t do any good. I was still yelling and he was still somersaulting when Uncle Hans came wandering down the stairs.

‘Ach, Nickie, training Tray, I see.’

Uncle Hans was wearing a black cutaway with a high starched collar which looked incredibly non-Southern California, as if he were about to attend the funeral of a Belgian alderman in 1902 Ostend.

‘Uncle Hans,’ I said, ‘don’t you know how to stop him?’

But Uncle Hans’ mind was obviously still on his chess problem. His board, which he’d brought in from the garden, was on a little table by one of the goldfish pools. He went over to it, neatly side-stepping Tray, and sat down. At that moment Gino came hurrying down the stairs in a dark grey suit, whistling cheerfully. Gino was much better than I with Tray, who adored him almost as much as he adored Pam and Mother. Just as I was going to plead with him to do something about the somersaults, the front door buzzer rang.

Gino slapped me on the back. ‘Hi, Nickie, kid, go and answer it. You know how Anny hates overworking the help.’

I went to the door and opened it. A tall grey-haired man with very blue eyes was standing there. He was wearing a black suit and a black tie. An undertaker? I wondered. Then he did a lot of jovial crinkling with his eyes, which wasn’t an undertaker-type expression.

‘Excuse me,’ he asked, ‘but is this where Miss Anny Rood is living?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

The merry crinkles grew to revolting proportions then. They were right out of Daddy Long Legs. The man felt in the pocket of his black jacket and brought out a snappy black wallet. From the wallet he produced a card and handed it to me.

I took it. I looked at it. It said:

INSPECTOR JOHN ROBINSON

DEPARTMENT OF POLICE

BEVERLY HILLS

CALIFORNIA

7

The appalling thing was that I dropped the card. The butterflies had started flapping in my stomach again and the card just slipped out of my hand. As I bent to pick it up, I could hear the soggy thumping of Tray still somersaulting around and around behind me.

The Inspector said, ‘I wonder if Miss Rood could spare me a moment.’

I got back into an erect position and put the card in my pocket because there’s nothing that shows up a shaky hand more than holding a small object.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘We’re going to a funeral and we’re late and Mother’s still changing and …’

‘So you’re Miss Rood’s son?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I imagine it’s Miss Delanay’s funeral you’re going to?’

‘Yes.’

‘So am I.’

Without being invited, the Inspector moved past me into the hall, looking around in an alarmingly professional manner. Tray saw him and stopped somersaulting and barked. Gino, all co-operative white-toothed grin, was coming towards us.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘What can we do for you?’

The Inspector produced another card. Gino looked at it, still grinning amiably. Gino could grin amiably at almost anything.

‘A cop, eh?’

The Inspector said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but are you a part of this household?’

‘Me?’ Gino flicked the card back to him. ‘Sure. Chauffeur, handyman, bodyguard. I’m just about everything around here, I guess. Morelli’s the name. Need some help, Inspector?’

‘Well,’ said the Inspector and paused for what seemed like eternity. Then he said, ‘Well, maybe, yes. Maybe it’d be kind of tactful to keep Miss Rood out of this for the time being. Mr Morelli, I wonder if you’d be good enough to tell me what Miss Rood was doing around ten o'clock last Thursday night.’

Hovering in the background, I counted wildly backwards in my mind. Thursday. Of course. Why had I bothered to count when I knew? The Night of the Plunge.

I should have realized that Gino could take care of things far more efficiently than I, but, in spite of myself; I heard myself blurting, ‘That was the night Norma Delanay died, wasn’t it, Inspector? I’ve just come back from Paris but Mother was telling me about it and I think she was at home that night.’

The Inspector’s back was towards me and he didn’t turn. He paid no attention to me at all. He merely went on looking at Gino, who went on looking back at him unconcernedly.

‘Thursday?’ he said. ‘Sure. The kid’s right. That night we all stayed home, ate supper and went to bed early.’

The Inspector went in for another pause. ‘I imagine there’s help in this house? I mean regular help? A couple or something?’

‘Sure,’ said Gino.

‘You wouldn’t object if I just checked up with them?’

‘Go ahead. They won’t know anything though. They were out. Thursday’s their night out.’

‘I see,’ said the Inspector. Then his eyes fell on Uncle Hans brooding over his chess-board. ‘Is that gentleman a part of the household too?’

‘That’s Mr Harben,’ said Gino. ‘Miss Rood’s uncle.’

And then, to my horror, Inspector Robinson started across the hall to Uncle Hans. Uncle Hans with a police inspector! Uncle Hans way, way off in his chess-game with his genius brain totally disconnected! I glanced desperately at Gino, who was looking rattled too. But there was nothing we could do. The Inspector was tapping Uncle Hans on the shoulder. Uncle Hans glanced up rather testily because he loathed being interrupted. Then, realizing it was a stranger, all his old-world Swiss courtesy came out and he jumped up, smiling. The smile made me pray that an earthquake would crack the imported marble floor and engulf us all, because it was his all-too-well-known sweet, elsewhere smile.

‘Mr Harben?’ said the Inspector.

‘Yes, sir, that is correct.’

‘I’m an Inspector of the Police. I’m checking up on what Miss Rood was doing last Thursday night.’

Inspector, Uncle Hans! A Police Inspector! I tried to hurl the information across the intervening space into his brain by an act of will. But the elsewhere smile was just as charmingly vague as ever.

‘Thursday night?’ he murmured. ‘How interesting you should ask this. Always I have claimed that if one had to swear to what one was doing even a few hours previously, one would be hard put to it. Yes. Very hard put to it. Thursday night.’ He put a finger to his lower lip and pushed it upward against his upper lip. ‘Today is Monday, isn’t it? Well, last night …’

He broke off then with a little delighted cry. ‘Ach, dumb-head! Why do I not think of it before? Years ago, I learned not to trust that most imperfect of faculties: the human memory. To protect myself, I always have my diary handy.’

He felt awkwardly around to the back pocket of his cutaway. As he fumbled and I died a thousand deaths, Tray came over, tugged at my trousers, whimpered and tried to stand on his head again. Finally Uncle Hans managed to pull out a crumpled little leather book. Then he had to find his glasses and put them on.

‘Thursday — Thursday.’ He started to leaf through the book. ‘Ach, here we are. Thursday night — dinner with Ronnie and Norma.’

‘With Miss Delanay?’ The Inspector’s voice swooped like a bird of prey and it was all I could do to strangle a hoarse cry.

Then, with the most apologetic of smiles, Uncle Hans said, ‘Ach, wait a minute. Excuse me, Inspector. How foolish I am. I have the wrong Thursday. That was the week before. Let me see. Ah, yes, Thursday. Morning: Worked on chapter twenty. Afternoon: chess and snooze. Evening: Servants night off. Anny made delicious fondue. Rather heavy on stomach. Played bezique with Anny. Bed eleven-thirty. Read Spinoza.’

He passed the book to the Inspector. I was quivering then, but it was partly with hope. The Inspector read. Then he returned the book to Uncle Hans.

‘Well, I guess that about settles that, doesn’t it?’

Simultaneously Gino and I ran over to them and, to my joy, I saw that the Inspector’s Daddy Long Legs smile was going full blast again. He turned it on us too. ‘To tell you frankly, gentlemen, we weren’t worrying too much about this. But I had to check up, of course. You always do with anonymous letters.’

‘Anonymous letters?’ I exclaimed.

‘Came in this morning. Get ‘em all the time, of course. Particularly with celebrities. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s just some crackpot. But you can never be sure, can you?’

Inspector Robinson stood for a moment watching us all with those terrible corny crinkles. Then he brought out of his pocket a particularly elegant shell-pink envelope from which he produced a shell-pink piece of paper. I hurled my hand out and he gave it to me.

The message on the extremely expensive paper was typewritten in capitals. It said:

ANNY ROOD WAS AT NORMA DELANAYS THAT NIGHT. ANNY ROOD MURDERED NORMA DELANAY BECAUSE ANNY ROOD WANTS TO PLAY NINON DE LENCLOS

As both Gino and Uncle Hans read over my elbow, I stared at the message with returning jitters. So somebody knew! Some terrifying, unknown enemy with expensive pink note-paper! Mother’s note-paper was usually pink. Then … then … Delight Schmidt? Was it conceivable that such perfidy…? I forced myself to stop thinking because heaven knew what was happening to my face. I gave the letter back to the Inspector, who glanced through it again before putting it back in his pocket.

‘You know?’ he said. ‘That Ninon de Lenclos bit would have convinced me the whole thing was nuts anyway. Imagine the Great Anny Rood having to bump someone off to get a part in a movie! She must have twenty offers a week!’

He grinned then. He was Hilarity itself. He held out his hand to Uncle Hans.

‘Glad I talked to you, Mr Harben.’ The chummy hand was stretched out to Gino. ‘You too, Mr Morelli.’ He patted me on the back. ‘Goodbye, son. Maybe I’ll see you around at the funeral.’

With a little contented sigh, Uncle Hans settled back to his chess-board. Gino, all flashing teeth, started escorting the Inspector to the door. They were half way there when Tray started somersaulting again. I could have killed him. Inspector Robinson stopped and watched him indulgently.

‘Well, what d’you know? A pooch doing handsprings. That isn’t something you see every day.’

‘No, sir,’ said Gino. ‘Tray’s a real smart mutt. You know? Norma Delanay — she was just crazy about him and his tricks. Couldn’t get enough of them. All the time we would take Tray over just for Miss Delanay to see him go through his routine.’

‘Well,’ said the Inspector. ‘What d’you know?’

They went to the door then. Gino eased the Inspector out and closed the door, looking back at me with an exaggerated Italian grimace of relief. I, of course, was feeling relief, too, but what I was feeling most was a wild admiration and love for Uncle Hans, which swept away all discretion. Grabbing Gino, I dragged him back to Uncle Hans, whom I embraced, almost knocking over his chess-board.

‘Ach, Nickie. Careful. What are you doing? What..?’

‘Uncle,’ I said, ‘you were sensational.’

I glanced from him to Gino. ‘It’s all right. I know you were all at Norma's. Pam told me. Uncle, that fuddy-duddy act! The fake entry in the diary! When did you make it? On the actual night?’

Uncle Hans looked at us shyly. ‘Ach, how embarrassing that you have found me out for the wicked old crook that I am.’ In spite of himself, he couldn’t keep his pride from showing. ‘As a matter of fact, yes, I wrote it on the actual night. When we came home — so much excitement, aye! — and I sat down to write my diary, I thought: Is this suitable for a diary, Hans. In these days with servants you do not know, with all these terrible scandal magazines always ready to pounce on the great and the famous? No, it is not, I said. So instead I invented a more suitable evening.’ He grinned sheepishly. ‘It was fortunate, wasn’t it?’

‘Fortunate!’ echoed Gino. ‘It was genius. Good old Uncle Hans — the genius of the family. Boy, did you fix that cop!’

‘Did he?’ I asked, more than prepared to be convinced because being convinced was so much more pleasant than not being convinced.

‘Sure,’ said Gino. ‘Of course he was fooled. Why not? Some cranky anonymous letter? A big star like Anny? Who’s going to believe a cranky anonymous letter about a big star like Anny when Uncle Hans’s got it written down in his book that she was sitting right here at the time?’

I felt a lovely warm glow.

‘Then we can forget it? We don’t even have to tell Mother?’

‘Tell Anny?’ said Gino. ‘You out of your mind? Getting her all het-up for nothing just before the funeral?’

He stopped then, putting a large finger conspiratorially to his lips, for a commotion had broken loose at the head of the stairs and Mother, escorted by Pam and Delight, all in various degrees of chic black, came hurrying down towards us.

None of them could have noticed the Inspector’s car, for no one made any mention of it and, in a few seconds, Mother was bustling us all off to the Mercedes. Tray made a fuss trying to clamber in with us, but Pam outfoxed him by ordering him to play dead. As we drove away, he was left stretched out like a corpse on the front steps, and all the way to Ronnie’s Mother rehearsed us for the TV cameras.

‘They will be at the church doors, dears, and possibly at the grave. Remember. Always keep your mouths slightly open. Not gaping, of course, but slightly open. And if a columnist or a reporter wants to interview you, which they may, just be simple and natural and speak from the heart.’

Soon we reached Ronnie’s gatehouse and started purring up the drive along which Pam and Tray had run on The Night. The house, infinitely macabre to me, loomed in front of us, the largest French château off the Loire. We all piled out on the drive, where two black funereal limousines with black funereal chauffeurs were parked. A butler opened the door and there we were in the hall by the huge Juan Gris, with the staircase sweeping up ahead of us. I wished I had enough moral courage to face it all unflinchingly, but I hadn’t.

I just stood with my head full of plunges and anonymous letters, and then, when I saw Delight staring at the staircase, obviously thinking the most unmentionable thoughts, I couldn’t face it and looked down at my shoes.

It was the greatest mistake I ever made because I was not only looking at my shoes, I was looking at Ronnie’s floor. And right there, splashed across the Mexican tiles, I saw a succession of faint but quite unmistakable paw-marks.

And they weren’t just paw-marks; they were infinitely worse than that; they were spaced at the most grotesque distances from each other. No ordinary dog could have made them. They could only have been left by an unordinary, monstrous, somersaulting dog.

It didn’t surprise me, knowing California servants, that Tray’s paw-prints should still be there four days later, but, as I looked at them, a dreadful, completely reinterpreted memory of Inspector Robinson’s crinkles came. Hadn’t he stopped and looked at Tray? Hadn’t he said, ‘A pooch doing handsprings? You don’t see that every day?’ At the time, I’d thought he was just being chummy. But — what if he’d noticed the paw-prints on The Night and was putting two and two together? What if all that revolting Daddy Long Legs palsy-walsiness had been fake?

The marble foyer seemed to rock and roll around me. Gino was away from the others, standing gazing at the Juan Gris. Gino had an unexpected highbrow thing about modern painting. In a desperate attempt to seem nonchalant, I slid over to him.

‘Gino.’

‘Hi, Nickie,’ he said, still pondering the Juan Gris.

‘Gino, it’s the end. Tray’s paw-prints — they’re all over the hall.’

‘So.’ Gino turned to me with the broadest, whitest grin. ‘I kind of figured they might be.’

‘You figured . . .?’

‘Didn’t you get it? When I saw the cop watching Tray, I suddenly figured, what if there were some prints on Ronnie’s floor? That’s why I gave him that line about Norma being crazy about Tray and us bringing him over here all the time.’

He slung his arm over my shoulder. ‘Get it, Kid? That way I’ve got it all sewed up. If the cop didn’t notice the prints, then okay he didn’t notice them. If he did — what can he do now? He’s maybe got a suspicion that maybe Anny was there after all. But how can he prove it? What’s to stop us from having brought Tray over to do his tricks for Norma the day before or even the day before that or even maybe the morning of the day when she fell? Boy, it’s in the bag.’

The foyer wasn’t rocking and rolling quite as much, but it was still rocking and rolling a bit. My face must have showed it, for Gino took his arm off my shoulder and playfully tapped me on the cheek with his fist.

‘Relax, kid. There’s nothing to get steamed up about. Thanks to the Old Home Team, starring Uncle Hans and Gino, there's…’

At that point he broke off because Ronnie came hurrying down the staircase towards us.

Ever since I was a boy, I’d always thought of Ronnie Light as the suavest, most debonair figure in Hollywood, and I’d been sure that Mother’s description of him as ‘shattered’ had just been Mother. Ronnie, I felt, was the one man who could more than rise above this hideous situation. But, to my surprise, as he came towards us, ‘shattered’ was exactly the word for him. His distinction was still there, of course. Nothing could get rid of that. But it was a sort of ‘shattered’ distinction.

He went to Mother first and kissed her cheek. ‘Anny!’

‘Dear Ronnie!’

He vaguely noticed the rest of us and gave us the weakest of greetings.

‘Hello, everybody. I’m …’

His voice choked off in what could have been grief but which seemed to me much more like an uncontrollable attack of the jitters.

Mother was squinting down at a tiny diamond watch pinned to her breast.

‘Heavens, it’s late. We must leave. This very minute.’

She was half way towards the door when Ronnie managed to croak, ‘Anny, I’m afraid we can’t leave just yet. I’m afraid … That is, I’ve just had a call …’

And then, while Mother was poised on the threshold, halted by his words, another lovely black-draped figure came hurrying in from outside. She saw Mother and stretched out both arms to her, her teeth flashing shark-white under her little flying veil.

‘Deah, deah Anny,’ she cried in that rich, unspeakably cultured voice which Pam, who was the ‘real thing’ in England and knew what she was talking about, maintained had been fabricated in the slums of Birmingham for Export Only. ‘Deah, deah Anny — deah, deah Ronnie. I do hope I’m not tarsomely late.’

There it was — there was no doubt about it — there was Sylvia La Mann, a rather plump but quite unmistakable Sylvia La Mann.

While Mother stood rooted to the spot like a beautiful pillar of salt, Sylvia La Mann wafted over to Ronnie, touching his hands with the tips of long black-gloved fingers and gave him a thirty-eightish version of her 'Queen of the Rosebud Garden of Girls’ look which, in the old days before the Industry and the Public and the oil tycoons had all got hep to it, had always been winning her Oscars and contracts and husbands.

‘Deah Ronnie, I put off the Colmans. They understood. Of course they do. The moment I told them you’d called especially and needed me to be family, they understood in a trice.’

I turned to Ronnie, as did everyone else, waiting for him to strike her, which was the least, I felt, that he could do.

But instead, incredibly, he was smiling a craven smile. He even let her kiss him, although, around her gorgeous orange curls, I saw him dart Mother a look of hare-like apprehension.

‘Deah Ronnie.’

‘Dear Sylvia. How sweet of you to change your plans for me. And now, I think, we should all of us be going…’

8

Soon we were all out milling on the front steps. Both of the funereal black chauffeurs had sprung from their funereal black limousines and were standing by the open rear doors. Sylvia La Mann had looped her hand through Ronnie’s arm and was drawing him possessively towards the leading car. Mother, who had lost the advantage, splendidly regained it. She merely looped her hand even more firmly through Ronnie’s other arm, dazzled the chauffeur with a smile and then, turning the smile on to Sylvia’s rather too voluptuous hips, said, ‘Ronnie, dear, let’s take Sylvia with us. She’ll make such a squeeze for them in the other car.’

Having given the impression that Sylvia took up as much space as Elsa Maxwell, she stepped first into the car. Ronnie got in next followed rather clumsily by Sylvia La Mann. We, the forgotten ones, the nobodies, the little people, all crammed into the second limousine.

The funeral service was to take place at the very grand Episcopal Church in Westwood Village where, improbably, Ronnie was churchwarden. As we drove sedately behind the other limousine, they were all seething with indignation and curiosity.

‘Why did he let her get away with it?’ said Pam. ‘He must be out of his mind.’

‘I think it’s divine,’ said Delight Schmidt, who was sitting next to me, a fact of which I was uncomfortably conscious. ‘Bereaved husband arrives at wife’s funeral with ex-paramour and would-be second wife.’ She glanced sideways under her lashes at me the way she was always doing, the way I wished she would stop doing. ‘Nicholas, do you think one of them will plunge into the grave like Pola Negri and Rudolph Valentino?’

‘It wasn’t Pola Negri,’ I snapped, moving my knee away from hers.

Delight Schmidt sighed and brought her knees back together. ‘Oh, Nicholas, why are you so surly with me when I feel it my duty to your Mother to become the ray of sunshine in your life?’

For quite a while we went on driving past very expensive bits of Southern California, while I was torn between dark, dark thoughts and the consciousness of Delight’s knee.

Suddenly Delight said, ‘Nicholas, have you ever played Tot? It’s a lovely game. Every time you see a child in a passing car you scream ‘Tot’, and if you scream it first you win a point. There are special Tots, of course, which count more. A one-armed Tot, for example, or a two-headed Tot or maybe an ex-Tot. I mean, if, for example, you were to see Deanna Durbin …’

Normally, I’m sure, Pam would have found the game as revolting as I did, but she must suddenly have remembered that Delight Schmidt was still potential dynamite, because she nudged me in the ribs.

‘What an amusing game. Why don’t you two children play it?’

I was ashamed of her, but I played it and I blush to admit got rather carried away. I can only imagine my system needed some sort of distraction after its surfeit of strains. Needless to say, we didn’t scream 'Tot', we merely murmured it because we were intimidated by the funereal chauffeur.

By the time we reached Westwood Village and could see the crowds teeming outside the church, Delight was two points behind and I found myself beginning to reflect that it wasn’t really her fault that she was a smooth, green-eyed

California red-head and, after all, Monique was a long way away. I even started grudgingly to admit it seemed unlikely that Delight could have been double-faced enough to have sent the anonymous letter. But that — instead of helping me back to ‘positive’ thinking — made it far, far worse, because, if Delight hadn’t sent the letter, then there was someone else who knew. Some unknown person, quite out of our control, who would be a million times more dangerous.

What, I thought, if they sent a second letter? And then a third? Each time exposing more lurid details? Suddenly Uncle Hans and Gino were back being what they had always been, a dear, sweet, semi-genius, ex-yodeler and a cheerful, simple-minded ex-acrobat. Why had I ever let them lull me?

Of course Inspector Robinson hadn’t been fooled about the letter or the paw-prints. And he was going to be at the funeral!

Delight’s knee was back against mine, nuzzling it. Quite unintentionally, because I was too far gone into demoralization to be my own master, I found my own knee nuzzling back.

I talked about crowds ‘teeming’ outside St Luke’s and it wasn’t an exaggeration. Hollywood is funny about Its Own.

Norma hadn’t been a star for years and she had antagonized everyone (How could you fail to be antagonized by Norma?), but even so she was Someone Who Had Achieved Something and, for that reason, the whole Industry was obviously turning out now to see her off. Once the whole Industry turns out for a thing, that’s when the mobs congregate. The whole effect was more or less like a premiere except that there weren’t any floodlights or any grandstands where the fans could sit and yell when Their Favourite Star showed up.

The crowd was very well behaved, for a crowd. Ronnie’s limousine was obviously the Car of the Moment, but, although the mob peered and craned necks and buzzed like nectar-crazed bees, none of them, as I had feared, shook their fists when they recognized Mother and Sylvia La Mann or cried out, ‘Shame. Scarlet Women!’ The car slid to a halt outside the church and, quite unmolested, Ronnie and Mother and Sylvia started up the steps. Even the TV cameras were dignified. I had expected some hysterical MC would clutch Ronnie and drag him to the cameras to say a few well-chosen words, but nothing like that happened. The three of them just disappeared into the church.

The whole thing was easy for us, of course. No one paid the slightest attention to us.

As we went up the steps towards the TV cameras, Delight squeezed my hand and whispered, ‘Sag your mouth, Nicholas.’

I squeezed back just for the reassurance of human contact.

We were in the church then. It was already jammed. I looked tautly around for Inspector Robinson. I couldn’t see him. Distinguished motion-picture actors were being ushers. Brad Yates, who had been signed as male lead for Eternally Female, happened, rather embarrassingly, to be our usher. He recognized Pam, of course, and took us down the aisle to Ronnie’s pew. Ronnie and Mother and Sylvia were already seated, with Mother on the outside. I slipped in next to her, then Delight, then Pam, then Uncle Hans and then Gino.

Mother gave me a swooning Madonna look and muttered, like a ventriloquist, without moving her lips, ‘Don’t look, darling, but behind us — Miss Leroy. Pass it on.’

Dutifully I whispered to Delight, who whispered to Pam etc., but I wished I hadn’t known. Miss Leroy was as bad as Inspector Robinson. Although I couldn’t see her, she seemed like an immensely powerful beam of light boring into the back of my neck.

Little does she know! I thought, and self-induced chills scuttled up my spine.

Then I became distracted by Sylvia La Mann, who had ostentatiously plunged to her knees and was pressing her eye-veil against the back of the pew in front of her. What was she doing? Confessing? I hoped not, for if she were the whole front pew might start smoldering.

Although in my various schools I had been submitted to almost every known type of religious ceremony, except a Bantu initiation rite, I had never been to a funeral before. I had been half dreading the fact that Norma would be on show and there would be a terrible march past. But it was all right. There was the coffin but it was massed with flowers. Flowers were everywhere, including a huge horseshoe of purple orchids with a ribbon across the front like the Order of the Garter. Who? I thought. Sylvia La Mann? Mother, I knew, had sent one exquisite white cattleya.

Much to my relief, Sylvia La Mann had resumed an upright position. I glanced at her past Ronnie’s haggard profile. She was trying to look purged. What she looked was immensely pleased with herself. What about? What was all this Sylvia La Mann thing anyway?

‘Nicholas,’ whispered Delight.

‘Yes.’

‘This isn’t my denomination. Do we have to do anything difficult?’

‘I don’t know. I get them mixed up.’

‘Then we’d better follow Sylvia La Mann. Think of the thousands of times she’s had to do this for Metro.’

Mother darted us a knife glance. ‘Hush, children.’

Then the service started.

It all turned out to be simple and moving, except for a couple of immensely distinguished Figures in the Motion Picture Industry who felt it incumbent upon them to give long addresses, one of them extolling Norma as A Symbol Of All That Was Finest In Our Unflagging Effort to Educate The American Public To The Appreciation Of Higher Things, and the other extolling her as A Lovely Lady And A Loyal Wife Who Would Leave A Great Gap In The Social Fabric.

It would have been better, I felt, if they had just left Norma alone.

But Sylvia La Mann was deeply touched by the second speech. She dabbed at her veil with her little lace handkerchief and, to my horror, reached for Ronnie’s hand and gripped it. To my even greater horror, Ronnie let her get away with it. I was terrified that Miss Leroy would have periscope eyes and would be able somehow to bend her gaze at a right angle. I was terrified of Mother, too, but Mother either didn’t notice or, which was almost too much to believe, was rising above it.

When it was all over, the ushers doubled as pall-bearers. While the organ played — not, thank heavens, Did You Ever See A Dream Walking, which had been Norma’s Sweater Girl signature tune — they carried the coffin down the aisle, and our party was the first to parade out behind it. Ronnie went ahead with Mother on one side and Sylvia on the other. We all trooped after them.

This was the part I had been alarmed about. Surely the TV cameras would do something awful when we emerged on to the steps. Surely something would be expected of me. Where was Miss Leroy? Where was Inspector Robinson?

But it wasn’t too bad. When we got out on to the steps, Ronnie moved a little ahead so that he faced the TV cameras alone. Mother turned and drew me up to her with the result that, when Ronnie passed on and the cameras shifted to us, I was standing by her side with her hand lightly on my arm and with my mouth, I’m proud to say, slightly open. Sylvia was on the other side of me and — wouldn’t you know? — when the cameras came full on us, she gave a terrible throaty whimper and made pretty little ineffectual snatches at her person for the lace handkerchief.

For one moment the entire nation was privileged to witness Sylvia La Mann’s great grief, but only for a moment, because Mother, with a lightning movement, snatched the large linen handkerchief out of my breast pocket and literally obliterated Sylvia’s face with it, giving the TV audience at the same time her own perfectly ravishing Expression of Loss.

So that was all right.

Back in our two limousines, we followed the hearse out to the cemetery. It wasn’t Forrest Lawn or anything of that sort. Ronnie was, doing it all with great taste. There was another simple, moving bit at the grave with no melodramatics for Delight. And that was that.

At least, that’s what I thought, but I was all wrong because it was after the ceremony when everyone was milling out of the cemetery that the difficult part began. Presumably, that’s the moment in a funeral when everyone feels they don’t have to be too reverent anymore and a sort of social atmosphere takes over.

All types of stars and directors and things swooped down on us, breaking up the group. Pam and I got caught by a very nice actor and his wife who knew I’d been to Paris and started asking me all sorts of rather arch questions about La Ville Lumière. Delight had drifted off somewhere else. While I was trying to say the sort of things that nineteen-year-old boys are supposed to say about Paris, I began to realize that something was wrong with Pam. She had stiffened. In fact, she was quivering like a thoroughbred mare.

Suddenly I felt her grab my arm. ‘Darlings,’ she said to the actor and his wife, ‘please excuse us. We’ve simply got to get back to Anny.’

And then, as she drew me away, she whispered, ‘For pity’s sake, get Delight.’

She pointed between a Dancing Star and a Singing Star and I saw Delight deep in conversation with a small, rattish-looking middle-aged man with a lot of black hair.

‘Quick.’ Pam was hysterical. ‘Get her. Don’t you know who that is? It’s the Editor of Bare.’

Bare was one of the worst of those terrible gutter magazines which make fortunes unearthing people’s private lives. Instantly, of course, I realized Our Peril. I rushed over to Delight and, clutching her arm, said,

‘We’re leaving.’

Delight looked rather startled and then very pleased and, turning back to the Editor of Bare, said, ‘This is Nicholas. I am like clay in his hands.’

As I dragged her away, she looked at me with a doting smile. ‘Nicholas, how sweet of you to be jealous.’

‘Don’t you know who that was?’ I said.

‘That little man? He was terribly cozy. He was the only one in this sea of celebrities who bothered to realize what a beautiful soul I have.’

‘He’s the editor of Bare,’ I said.

She looked horrified. ‘Oh, my God …’

‘You didn’t tell him anything?’

‘No. No, of course I didn’t. But he was nosing around to Anny. I might have realized. Oh, Nicholas, would you know? There I was thinking I’d found myself a beau and what did it have to turn out to be? The editor of Bare. That’s the Schmidt curse for you. It’s hounded me from the cradle.’

It was all right anyway. I saw Pam hovering. I started back towards her and then, just as I did so, I noticed Mother and Ronnie and Sylvia talking to a lady columnist who wasn’t Lettie Leroy but was almost as legendary. That was bad enough, but what made it even more alarming was that, standing with them, crinkling like mad, was Inspector Robinson.

I made a desperate attempt to duck away, but I was too late. Mother had seen me and was beckoning.

‘Nickie dear, come and say hello to Gloria.’

Gloria was the columnist. Delight and I went over. Mother dazzled the Inspector with a smile.

‘Nickie, Delight, this is the wonderful police inspector who took care of everything — just everything for Ronnie.’

I couldn’t bring myself to confront Inspector Robinson. Instead I turned to Ronnie. He was looking even more distinguishedly shattered than he had at home. It was as if he had been bereft of at least twelve wives, all of whom he had worshipped this side of idolatry. Sylvia La Mann, on the other hand, was looking lovely and gracious and British with that same peculiar cream-swallowed look around her mouth.

Gloria, who was always terribly sweet to everyone but who had an eye like a photo-electric cell, greeted Delight and me with just the degree of lack of interest that we rated. Then she put her hand on the Inspector’s arm to show what buddies she was with the Police Department and turned back to Ronnie.

‘Ronnie dear, all of us old battleaxes of the press love you, as you well know, and all of us are feeling nothing but sympathy for you right now. But battleaxes will be battle-axes and there’s that dreadful column breathing down my neck. Ronnie, don’t think this is cold-blooded but so many people want to know. What’s going to happen? Have you decided yet? Who’s going to play Ninon de Lenclos?’

Something made me look at Mother then. She was, needless to say, as beautiful and enigmatic and correct as ever. But in her eyes I detected the faintest suggestion of the Field-Marshal-About-To-Hurl-His-Left-Wing-Into-The-North-West-Salient look. I knew what that meant only too well; that meant — Now. This, Mother had decided, was the very moment for the Tribute to be announced to the world.

As the realization came to me, I knew this was the most excruciating second of my life because, in a blinding flash, I saw the disastrous error we had made in not telling Mother about the Inspector’s visit. What had Inspector Robinson said? 'The Ninon de Lenclos bit was what made me sure it was nuts. Imagine Anny Rood having to bump somebody off to get a part in a movie!’ Maybe Uncle Hans had fooled him with the fake entry. Maybe he hadn’t noticed the paw-prints. But … but … . Mother, Mother, for pity’s sake, you’re going to plunge into the furnace. You’re going to…! I couldn’t have spoken even if I’d had anything to say. I felt as if I’d swallowed one of Mother’s divine fondues in its entirety.

‘Well?’ Gloria was laughing archly. ‘Don’t tell me you’re playing this cagey, Ronnie dear.’

I made myself look at Ronnie then. I thought he was going literally to drop dead and that they’d have to call back the men with the spades to dig another seven and a half by three foot hole.

‘Well …’ he stammered. ‘Well …’

That was when I saw Mother drawing herself up. The Tribute Look was beginning around her mouth, the look which she had practiced on me when we were sitting together on the bed.

‘Mother…!’ I croaked.

But no one seemed to notice me for, without any warning at all, Sylvia La Mann cocked her lovely head and fluttered a pretty look from Inspector Robinson to Ronnie and to Gloria.

‘Ronnie, deah, I think it’s all right, don’t you? I mean, I think this may be a beautiful moment and after all deah Gloria is such a bosom friend — positively bosom — and this nice Inspector Robinson has been so sympathetic.’

Ronnie said something but it was quite unintelligible. Sylvia La Mann arranged her veil then with tapering black-gloved fingers and Gloria got the full pretty look.

‘Gloria, deah, it’s not just for the picture’s sake. It’s much, much more than that. It’s for Norma. It’s because Ronnie and I are convinced that it was what Norma would have wanted. And that’s by far the most important factor.’ The pretty look embraced even Delight and me as if, as a tiny fraction of her public, we too were entitled to thrill to her news. ‘So there it is, Gloria, deah. It makes it a tiny bit difficult for me, of course, having to disappoint so many deah friends who had other plans for me, but I’m going to do it. I’m going to play Ninon. Oh, I know I’d never do it as well as Norma, never in a thousand years, but I’m going to try to be worthy of her memory.’

Completely split apart as I was, I could still realize that Mother was being wonderful. She had retreated behind her ‘nothing' look and was registering absolute negation.

Gloria, looking as if it was more than she could endure to find herself stranded in a cemetery where there were no telephones to plunge to, said, ‘You confirm that, Ronnie? I can print it?’

Ronnie, from somewhere, managed to produce the most seasick smile since Jonah’s trip in the whale.

‘Yes, Gloria. That is correct. Sylvia has very kindly consented to play Ninon de Lenclos.’

Gloria, who knew a scoop when she saw one, instantly swept Sylvia off with her towards her own special limousine, which was probably equipped with radar and two-way television and thumbscrews. For what seemed like the full extent of eternity the rest of us just stood. Then dimly I heard the Inspector’s voice.

‘Well, Miss Rood, I’ll wish you good day.’

He was holding out his hand. Mother was shaking it and then Ronnie was shaking it and then Delight was shaking it. When he came to me, the Inspector threw a benevolent arm around my shoulder and drew me off with him.

When we reached the grave of a woman improbably called Eliza M. Bunthorne which had a peanut-butter jar of pansies on it, he gave with the crinkles.

‘Listen, son, you didn’t tell your mother about that letter, did you?’

‘No,’ I gulped.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Just fine. It’d have been a shame worrying her — a big, successful star like that.’ The benevolent arm was still on my shoulder. It felt as heavy as the Empire State Building. ‘Know something, son?’

I was supposed to react. I knew it. So I managed, ‘Know what?’

‘I’ll let you in on a police secret. Maybe you’ll find it useful one day if ever you’ve got to handle the cops. This afternoon I guess I seemed pretty casual and friendly like with you, but, to tell the truth, I wasn’t brushing off that anonymous letter, no sir. Of course, there wasn’t anything exactly about Miss Delanay’s death that didn’t fit with an accident. Bottle of booze hidden in her room, all that. But a cop, you know, has to keep an open mind. A woman falling downstairs and breaking her neck? It does happen, sure, but it doesn’t happen every day. And then, actresses — you never know with actresses, do you, son? So this morning when that letter came, I figured: Well, what d’you know? Maybe we’re on to something here. Now if I was to open my Los Angeles Times one morning and read that Anny Rood was going to play Ninon de Lenclos…’

The Empire State Building came off my shoulder and thumped me on the back.

‘Yep, son. That’s how I was thinking. I’m here to tell you. Now you know. Never trust a friendly cop. Remember that. Might come in handy.’ He gave a sigh. ‘So Sylvia La Mann gets to play Ninon de Lenclos and that slams the file shut on Norma Delanay. Too bad, isn’t it, son? Think of the splash it would have made. INSPECTOR ROBINSON UNMASKS ANNY ROOD AS MURDERESS OF NORMA DELANAY. Well, you can’t win, can you?’

He laughed waggishly. He was being Old Mr Hilarity again. The eyes crinkled for the last time and he went away through the graves.

For a moment I just stood there, leaning against Eliza M. Bunthorne’s monument. There was relief. Of course there was, relief; immense, all-pervading relief. Inspector Robinson was a jerk. He hadn’t noticed the paw-prints. He was just a self-satisfied jerk, crinkling around seeing himself as the Smart Cop handing out tips to the Younger Generation. Okay. We were through with the police. Okay.

But that wasn’t all. Just because the police were dumb, that didn’t keep Norma from having been pushed. And look who was playing Ninon de Lenclos now! I couldn’t begin to understand how it had happened, but there it was. And if Mother had done what — what she just might have done, only to be confronted with…

I was engulfed by a great protective love for Mother. I’d never known I could feel so paternal, so much the man of the house. There she was standing where I had left her with Ronnie and Delight. I ran to her. She was still way, way off somewhere in her 'nothing' reverie. I put my arms around her. I couldn’t help myself. I kissed her on the cheek.

‘Mother,’ I said. ‘Gee, Mother!’

9

Mother didn’t say anything, but her reverie expression changed slightly and became spiritual as if she were having a vision of Norma’s enthusiastic reception at the Pearly Gates. Ronnie was making peculiar stuttering sounds like an almost frozen tap and then at last managed,

‘Anny … I can explain … please … the car … please’

Very gradually Mother returned from the beautiful reverie. She gave her head the faintest shake, drew my arm from around her and patted it gently.

‘What a charming man that Inspector seems to be, Nickie. How sweet of him to have a little chat with you. Excuse me, Ronnie dear, what did you say?’

‘Anny, for pity’s sake, the car … come …’

‘The car? Ah, oui, c'est tout accompli ici, n'est-ce pas?’ Mother gave me a tender smile and looped her arm through mine. ‘Dear Nickie, you and I will take poor Ronnie home with us and try to cheer him up.’

Ronnie threw an anguished glance from Mother to me. ‘But, Anny, how can I explain when that terrible boy … I mean, when Nickie …? Anny, we’ve got to be alone.’

But Mother converted that into One Of Those Things She Hadn’t Heard. She let the gentle smile shift to Delight. ‘Darling, find Pam and Gino and Uncle Hans. Go first to Ronnie’s in the limousine and then Gino can drive you home in the Mercedes.’

With that, she drew me down the cemetery path and there was nothing Ronnie or I could do. We made, I’m sure, a lovely somber picture as we departed with Mother bowing and nodding to various illustrious friends who, out of respect for Ronnie’s grief, didn’t actually accost us but merely bowed and nodded back.

Since Ronnie had reverted to speechlessness, it was Mother who, with a great deal of charming eyelash batting, instructed the chauffeur to drive to our house rather than to Ronnie's. Then we were all three in the back seat, with me, placed, very deliberately, by Mother, like a buffer, in the center of the group.

There weren’t any mobs outside the gates. Norma’s drawing power didn’t seem to have stretched as far as the cemetery. The limousine purred silently off through gracious palms and eucalyptus which had been planted to make a sort of No Man’s Land between the Dead and the Living.

As we proceeded into a section of perfectly hideous Desirable, Convenient, Lower-Income-Bracket Homes, Ronnie exploded like an over-inflated balloon.

‘Yes, dear.’

‘I couldn’t help it.’

‘Help what?’

‘For pity’s sake, you know what.’

‘Tell us, Ronnie dear — just quietly and simply.’

‘Sylvia,’ he spluttered. ‘I couldn’t help it about Sylvia.’

‘About Sylvia playing Ninon?’ Mother, whose magnificence had seldom soared to so exalted a peak, merely raised and lowered the lashes and gave him a Good Old Friend smile. ‘But, Ronnie dear, why not? That I should do it was only a notion — a casual idea. As the producer, you have every right to change your mind if you feel that a British Ninon…’

‘Oh, God.’ Ronnie clutched both his hands to his head. ‘Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.’

‘Nickie, dear,’ said Mother. ‘Help Ronnie. Don’t you see he needs help?’

All I could think of to do was to offer him the handkerchief with which Mother had obliterated Sylvia La Mann. He pushed my hand savagely away and moaned, ’Oh, God ,’ again.

Then, whirling around and leaning across me towards Mother, he said, ‘Do you honestly think I want her? Do you think I don’t realize she’ll be as cataclysmic as Norma? It’s just …’

He gave up then. ‘Just — what, dear?’ asked Mother.

‘That monstrous female! With Gloria standing there and that lurking, grinning policeman! What could I do? My hands were tied, bound, shackled, manacled for the Firing Squad.’

When he said ‘monstrous female’, Mother got to look more human and also faintly curious.

‘But what is it, Ronnie darling? How can you expect poor Nickie and me to understand when …’

‘She . . Sylvia ... Sylvia ... In the name of mercy, how can I explain anything when you insisted on lugging Nickie along?’

By then I was so tormented by curiosity that I abandoned any attempt to keep up an illusion of ignorance any longer.

‘If it’s anything to do with Mother being at your house when Norma plunged,’ I said, ‘don’t mind me. I know all about that.’

They both swung on me simultaneously. Ronnie looked green, presumably the shade Pam had described. Mother merely looked firm but indulgent.

‘Nickie dear, what are you talking about?’

‘Pam told me. At least I got it out of Delight and then made Pam tell me the whole thing.’

‘Delight?’ echoed Ronnie. ‘Who conceivably could be called Delight?’

‘Don’t be silly, Ronnie,’ said Mother. ‘You know Delight, the lovely girl who was with us at the funeral, my secretary. She’s perfectly divine.’ She put a butterfly hand on my knee. ‘So you know, Nickie dear. Perhaps it’s just as well.’ She sighed and then turned back to Ronnie. ‘There, dear. You see? There’s nothing to worry about. Now tell us. Sylvia knows — what?’

Ronnie groaned. ‘Sylvia knows you were at the house that night. And not only that. She knows something else, too. It’s incredible. I can’t conceive how. But she does.’

‘But, Ronnie dear,’ said Mother, ‘how could she possibly know?’

‘When I went to the studio to cut off the phones in the house, somebody called. I told you that. Well, it was Sylvia.’

Mother started looking vague again. Ronnie’s face turned a most undebonair shade of pink.

‘Anny, darling, I hadn’t been seeing her. You know it. After you’d saved me from her unspeakable coils. I hadn’t even set eyes on the degenerate, scheming cobra. She just - well, that night she just happened to call. I might have known she would sooner or later. She’d just been biding her time.’

As I watched him with one of Mother’s 'keen' glances, he went on, ‘And you can’t imagine what it was like. She was crying and sobbing and whimpering and moaning. How could I have abandoned her? Didn’t I realize I was the only Real Thing in her life — the only Pure, Honest, Straight Thing she’d ever known. She’d been in agony, absolute agony, and now this was the end. Now she was going to slash her wrists, put her head in a gas oven, take sleeping pills, jump off the Malibu pier.’

Ronnie thought about reaching over me to clutch Mother’s hand but didn’t quite dare. ‘I knew it was phony, of course. That woman is one hundred per cent guaranteed unadulterated phony. But I couldn’t hang up. I mean — think if she really had done it, leaving suicide notes all over the place. So I started to argue. It didn’t do any good. She just went on and on and on. Did I know she had no contract, that no studio would touch her, that she was penniless, that she would be forced to sink back into the gutters of Birmingham from which she’d so valiantly struggled? Then, on top of it all, she got on to you. It was all the fault of that dreadful Anny Rood, who had poisoned my mind against her. If it hadn’t been for that frightful Anny Rood…’

Ronnie paused to find some more breath from somewhere and then plunged on. ‘That’s when I felt myself snapping. Anny, darling Anny, you know how I snap. Something happens inside like the wrong things happening to an elastic band — and I snap. So I snapped and I heard myself yelling into the phone, ‘Okay. End it all. Go ahead. But before you do, I’d like you to know that Anny’s here right now, and all this time, while you’ve been gluing me to this phone for a full twenty minutes, she and Norma have been having a terrific pitched battle. By now one of them’s probably murdered the other, so at least you’ll find a dear old friend waiting for you in the Great Beyond.’ ‘

He broke off, appalled, as well he might be, at the memory of that most unfortunately phrased sentence. But he couldn’t have been more appalled than I because, as I had listened to his tirade, a thought more ominous than any of my thoughts to date had swooped down on me. Until then, there had always been Ronnie. In those unfortunate moments when I knew Norma had been pushed, there had always been Pam’s theory to fall back on. But now — if Ronnie had been telling the truth, if he’d been on the phone with Sylvia all through those crucial twenty minutes — then he was out as a pusher. And Uncle Hans and Gino had been together at the pool house. And Pam and Tray had been running all over the grounds. Who then did that leave definitively, once and for all, as the only possible pusher? Who?

I made myself glance at Mother. No one had ever looked more composed.

‘So later Sylvia came to you, Ronnie dear?’ A faint ripple of distaste furrowed her brow. ‘And she threatened you? Either she played Ninon — or she told the police about me?’

‘It was two days ago,’ said Ronnie. ‘She just showed up at the house in the morning, all lovely dimpled contrition and apologies. She knew it was frightful to thrust herself on me at such an unhappy time, but the absurdest thing! She happened to have lent Norma her divine diet book, Eat Away Calories, weeks ago at a party, and — how embarrassing! — it was signed by the author and the author was corning to lunch. Of course, it was a preposterous ruse and I knew it. But I let her go upstairs to look for the book. She was gone for hours and I thought, My God, what is she up to? I rushed upstairs and there she was with the book in her hand. And then, right there in Norma’s bedroom, that’s where the squeeze came. But I didn’t give in. Maybe I should have, but blackmail is something that makes me snap and I snapped again and I screamed, ‘You play Ninon and turn her into a terrible Memsahib from Poona? Are you out of your mind? Anny plays Ninon and, if you don’t like it, raise all the stink in the world. Who cares? It’s only the uncorroborated word of one spiteful, ageing, bankrupt, ex-English motion-picture actress. Get out. Get out of here.’ And I literally hurled her out of the house and, as I was hurling, all the cobra came out in her and she screamed, ‘You wait. Anny murdered Norma to get that part. You know it and I know it. And I’ll tell the police. I’ll …’

‘She did,’ I broke in because, of course, the lovely shell-pink anonymous letter had fallen into place.

Ronnie spun around to me and I told them everything about Inspector Robinson.

For a moment Ronnie looked aghast. ‘But it’s all right? I mean, everything’s okay now with Inspector Robinson?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He gave a huge sigh and then fury started jumping around in his eyes. ‘But to think of it! How low can a woman sink? Writing anonymous letters to the police. I never dreamed …’

‘But, Ronnie,’ I said, ‘what happened then? What’s the other thing Sylvia knows?’

‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘Oh, God. That happened today. I wasn’t worrying. I was sure I’d called her bluff, that it would all be okay, that there’d be a little peace. That’s why I hadn’t even told you, Anny. And then — then, this afternoon just about twenty minutes before you all arrived, the phone rang and it was Sylvia. You should have heard her. Little merry bells were tinkling all over her voice. “Ronnie, darling, I was thinking of going down to see Paul Denker this afternoon.” Paul Denker, you know, is that frightful crooked lawyer of hers on the Strip. “Yes, darling,” she said, “and I was wondering whether dear Mr Denker mightn’t be interested in your little secret merger with …” ’

The undebonair pink flush was back. ‘And she mentioned the name of the company. I can’t tell you what it is, Anny not even you. But it’s a deal. Not a bit crooked, of course, not a bit. But it isn’t settled and there are millions of dollars involved and if at the moment the slightest hint of it was to break, worst of all to that appalling crook, Denker …! I couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t have known. No one could possibly have known. But she did. Then the terrible silver bells tinkled again and she said, “So don’t you think it would be cozier if I came to the funeral with you instead and then after the funeral we can discuss my lovely Ninon again?” ’

A deep, sepulchral groan was wrenched from him. ‘I was licked. I knew it. Not just you, Anny darling, and the terrible

scandal for you, but the merger too! The boa-constrictor, the dreadful anaconda. And there at the cemetery, of course, she wasn’t going to wait and give me time to catch my breath. You there, Gloria there, Inspector Robinson there — she saw the ideal moment and she struck … Anny, dearest, you do see. You must see. She had me clutched by the throat.’

The limousine was in familiar territory now. We were swinging into the canyon where our so-called home was situated. Suddenly Ronnie grabbed over me for Mother’s hand.

‘Anny, darling, it’s an unqualified disaster. But I did my best. At the risk of plunging us all into hideous scandals, I clung grimly on so that you should play the part. But there it wasn’t to be. Anny, Anny, darling, please don’t feel bad. What is one disappointment? There will be other movies and, if there aren’t, there are so many, many beautiful things in life. I can show them to you, all of them. Oh, Anny, Anny, darling, marry me.’

When he said that he looked absurd but utterly sincere. And Mother, letting him hold her hand, warm and friendly and only the tiniest bit absent-minded, looked the Lovely Selfless Angel which I knew, in my innermost heart and against all reason, that she almost was.

Wasn’t it hideously diseased of me to go on suspecting her of being a blood-soaked Lady Macbeth who had grabbed for the prize and lost out? I would have given anything to have been able to think so and just become an ordinary son with an ordinary mother again. But I couldn’t. That disastrous image of Mother creeping after Norma simply wouldn’t fade out of my mind.

Ronnie was still almost in my lap as he leaned over me towards Mother.

‘Anny, I’ll wait. Three months, six months, a year, whatever time you think it should be, but marry me.’

As he said that, the limousine, swinging rather abruptly into our drive, threw us all into an inextricable knot of arms and legs.

Mother finally disengaged herself, plucking daintily at the folds of her skirt. Then, with the sweetest and most sorrowful smile, she said, ‘Ronnie, darling, it’s divine of you to ask me again and I absolutely adore you. But you must know by now how I feel about marriage.’

I thought she might go into her well-known speech about being married to her public and needing all her private affection for me and Uncle Hans and Pam and Gino, but she didn’t. She merely gave him the butterfly hand on the knee. ‘My poor Ronnie, I do wish you could learn to be a little more positive. Nothing truly catastrophic has happened. Your wonderful clever merger will go through now without any interference from that horrid little Mr Denker. And as for the picture, Sylvia may not be exactly my idea of Ninon or yours, and certainly it was very very naughty of her to do what she did, although, when you think of the state of her career, you can understand why. Even so, the public used to adore her. They might adore her again. And now she’s got her diet book back, I’m sure she’ll be able to take off a lot of that slack flesh. You must just be terribly careful, dear, not to let her back into your life. Make it a business arrangement strictly a business arrangement.’

Having settled that problem, Mother continued, ‘And as for me, Ronnie, it’s sweet of you to be afraid I’ll feel disappointed. I would have played Ninon. Of course I would have been proud to play her for your sake and for Norma. But speaking absolutely frankly, I’m not quite sure that it’s exactly the right part. Don’t misunderstand me, darling, I’m sure it’ll make a divine picture. But … well, I can’t help feeling the tiniest bit relieved that now I’ll be free to do something a little different, a little more stimulating.’

Like what? I thought. Scrubbing floors? But I had to hand it to her. Blood-soaked or no, she had managed to save enough face to equip the entire Japanese nation for generations to come.

Delight would have approved of my mouth because by then it was hanging wide open.

Mother’s hand, still on Ronnie’s knee, played a little inaudible tune — probably her bit of Grieg.

‘So, dearest Ronnie, please believe me, there’s nothing to worry about. The moment we get indoors, Nickie will fix you some lovely martinis at the pool house. You’ll be surprised how much better you’ll feel. And after that, those dear, loyal, overworked servants are dying to go to a movie. I know they are. So I’ll bustle them off and make us a delicious little supper.’

Ronnie must have become as used to being turned down by Mother as to being given sage advice, for he merely looked exhausted and moronic with adoration and left it at that. For a few moments, as the limousine slid to a stop outside the porticoed front steps where Tray was surlily scratching his ear, we all sat in silence.

Then very meekly Ronnie said, ‘Anny dear, since you’re always so wonderful, would you do me just one more favor?’

‘Of course, dear. What is it?’

‘My stomach. A little unsettled. Please. Not another fondue. Not tonight.’

For a second Mother looked extremely cross, then she decided to be BIG.

‘very well,’ she said, withdrawing the butterfly hand and privileging me with it instead. ‘Blanquette de veau.’

10

I made Ronnie martinis at the pool house, but they didn’t do anything for him. We sat glooming at each other on voodoo drums, and my desire to be anywhere else in the world came out as a violent nostalgia for Monique. Less than forty-eight hours! Was it possible that only two days ago there we had been, young, carefree, happy children in love? The moment I heard the others in the hall, which meant politeness no longer demanded my playing host, I hurried upstairs, found my own room with some difficulty and settled down at the desk in front of the photographs of Mother and my father which I’d meant to take with me to Paris but had forgotten. The notepaper which Mother had provided for me had DARRYL ZANUCK printed in huge letters across the top. I crossed it out. For one traitorous moment a quite unexpected image of Delight Schmidt rose up. I stamped on it and began:

‘Monique, chérie…’

The simple act of writing Monique’s name was enough to remind me that she was the cutest, sexiest, most inspirational girl in the world and I scribbled on, losing myself in that totally different, innocent Parisian existence where no one either did or didn’t push anyone else, where the nearest approach to Mother was a face on the silver screen batting eyelashes at long-forgotten leading men.

Suddenly, a voice behind me said, ‘Darryl-Zanuck-crossed-out-Monique-chérie. So that’s the tiny little escapade! Oh, dear, me again! Blabbermouth — snooper. I have a character constructed entirely from mud.’

I dropped the pen and spun around, belatedly covering the letter with my arm. Delight Schmidt, out of her widow’s weeds into a blouse and skirt, was standing behind me with a lot of Southern Californian evening sunshine sparkling all over the Carole-Lombard-revival hair-do.

‘Oh, Nicholas, I do apologize. All day you’ve been feeling miserable about Monique-chérie and there I’ve been trying to thrust my personality in your teeth. I get that way sometimes. It must be over-compensation or something for being penniless and an orphan and an unsuccessful dancer and dozens of other squalid things. But I can be bearable, honestly I can. Please be patient and you’ll find out.’

Her eyes were very green and the lashes were very long. Paris started floating back again to the other side of the Atlantic.

‘Hello,’ I said.

A warm, grateful smile came. ‘Oh, Nicholas, you’ve forgiven me. Then you’ll help me, won’t you? You’ll save me from this agonizing suspense. What’s going on around here? Why is Sylvia La Mann playing Ninon? Why is Ronnie glowering on a voodoo drum? Why is your mother preparing a delicious little supper in the kitchen? And what, what, what is the Secret of the Night of the Plunge? Oh, Nicholas, there’s nothing so tight-lipped as a reformed blabbermouth. It’s like an A. A. I swear I won’t breathe a word. Trust me, Nicholas, tell me.’

She took both my hands and pulled me over on to the bed, which was the only place where two people could sit together.

It was frail of me, I suppose, and not necessarily the method of ‘handling’ her which Pam would have chosen. But I felt ashamed for having suspected her of writing Sylvia’s anonymous letter and, on top of that, came an overpowering urge to confide in someone who wasn’t going to give me the old familiar ‘Nickie, you monstrous brat’ routine.

Almost before I realized what I was doing, I started telling her, and the whole thing came tumbling out. She listened in silence and, when I had finished, she was gazing at me from great saucer eyes.

‘Oh, Nicholas, you think she did it. You think Anny pushed Norma down the stairs!’

It’s one thing having suspicions; it’s another thing having someone put them as baldly as that into words.

‘For pity’s sake, I never said …’

‘But that’s what you think. You think she had it planned from the beginning … All that lovely friendship for Norma just to get her teeth into Ronnie, knowing all the time that Norma could never be parted from the gin bottle and that she’d end up being Ninon herself! And then, at the crucial moment — when there was no other way out — she pushed. Oh, Nicholas, if she did, what daring!’ For a moment she looked awed, then her mood darkened. ‘But think of the irony that came later. There she was steeped in gore, ready to snatch the guilty prize — Ninon, money, fame, a new career and wham! Look who hurtles in and tears off Ninon, money, fame, a new career! Sylvia La Mann.’

She turned to me on the bed. ‘It’s positively Greek. Sophocles would purr. Aeschylus would run not walk to the nearest papyrus or whatever he wrote on.’

It should have been getting steadily more hair-raising, but oddly enough it wasn’t. Somehow she had transformed it all into a realm of fantasy where everything could be faced and yet not faced. It was like a game — like Tot, and for the first time since I’d arrived home I felt almost relaxed.

She fell back on the bed then, gazing up at the ceiling. ‘Nicholas.’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t be stuffy. If it’s there, it’s there. There’s nothing you can do about it. So — revel in it. Who else has a Mother like that? Oh, Nicholas, dear, I’ll help you appreciate her. We’ll make a pact, found an Anny Rood For Murderess Society.’

I’d fallen back on the bed too. Hers wasn’t the sort of morality which would have gone over big at St Cecil's. But it was curiously comforting. So was Delight’s nearness. I twisted my body so that our faces were almost touching. By then Paris was even further away than Paris — somewhere way off in the steppes of Central Asia. Monique had been inspirational, but could she have been as inspirational as this? And did she have green eyes? Or red hair? I found myself putting my arms around Delight and moving my lips along her cheek.

‘Delight.’

‘Nicholas. Dear Nicholas.’

My lips found her mouth. She let them stay there for one second, then she drew herself away.

‘There. That’s the ritual kiss of the Anny Rood For Murderess Society. A very spiritual kiss because we’ve got to be spiritual, haven’t we? That’s how Monique-chérie would want it to be. Now, Nicholas, dear, go back and finish your letter.’

My arms were still around her. ‘To hell with the letter,’ I said.

At that moment Gino put his head around the door. ‘Nickie, kid, quick. Anny — she wants us. On the double. A special announcement. And … oops.’

His face broke into an appreciative grin and, waving a large acrobat’s hand, he went away. Instantly Delight jumped off the bed.

‘A special announcement! Nicholas, you — you don’t think she’s going to confess?’

I lay there on the bed feeling suddenly that the Anny Rood For Murderess Society had no charms at all. Everything was real again and most alarming.

‘Nicholas — come.’ Delight was tugging me up by the arms. ‘Quick. If we miss a moment of the Special Announcement, I’ll eat my foot.’

We ran down the stairs. Except for Mother, they were all assembled in the huge living-room, which was so Venetian you felt you had to be at least a Doge to have any right in it at all. Ronnie was slumped in a sort of throne. Pam, puffing at a cigarette, was pacing up and down with Tray. Gino sat with Uncle Hans on a couch.

Pam, seeing us, rushed to me. ‘Nickie, what in heaven’s name is she up to now?’

At that moment Mother came breezing in. She had changed out of her glamour black into the customary slacks and blouse and was wearing a large white chef’s apron. In her hand she carried a bottle of champagne. She took it to Gino, giving the top of Uncle Hans’ head an angel kiss.

‘Gino, darling, be a lamb, open it. Do things with glasses and things … I’ve made the sauce béchamel for the blanquette. It can all wait just for a little while.’

Gino uncorked the bottle and poured champagne into glasses on a vast and priceless Venetian breakfront which had been converted into an ‘amusing’ bar. Mother watched him indulgently. She never drank except champagne. I think it was a hangover from her vaudeville days when champagne must have seemed to her the height of luxe, something your slipper got filled with, you hoped.

Gino took her the first glass. We all scrambled rather undignifiedly for ours. When we all had glasses in our hands and my butterflies were beating themselves against the walls of my stomach, desperately trying to migrate, Mother lifted her champagne to Ronnie with a little rueful smile.

‘Ronnie darling, you mustn’t think I’m criticizing you when I say all this should have been taken up weeks ago. Of course it wasn’t anyone’s fault. How could we, any of us, have been thinking of anyone but poor Norma? But now I feel we can start thinking of ourselves again with a clear conscience.’

Ronnie looked as silly as the rest of us. Mother put down her glass and the luminous smile was supplanted by a look of great briskness.

‘Now, darlings, I’m going to scold you. Not you, Ronnie dear, of course, but the rest of you. I’ve been thinking about you all for a long time and really it’s disgraceful how you’ve let yourselves go.’

Pam, gulping, looked at me. I gulped.

‘You,’ said Mother, looking severely at Pam, ‘you used to be a divine dog-trainer — one of the finest in the field. What have you been doing with your ability all this time? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And Gino — when I think of those brilliant double-handsprings in Manchester, where are they now? Rotting, positively rotting with disuse, and you only thirty-nine. And, Uncle Hans, dear, sweet Uncle Hans. I know it isn’t your fault. I know people just got terribly boring about yodeling. But think — you, the greatest yodeler of them all. And as for Nickie…’

It was my turn to get the cruel-only-to-be-kind gaze. ‘Really, darling, running irresponsibly about all over the globe, trying to write boring books! Why? Why? Why? When you’re a born dancer. Don’t you remember how brilliant you were at the Dancing and Fencing Academy? All that talent going to waste. And while we’re on the subject of dancing…’

It was Delight’s moment then.

‘They tell me that you had planned a dancing career too, dear. Did you stick to your guns? Where did you think it was going to get you putting terrible sequins on the … well, never mind, I think I’ve made my point and I’m sure you’ll all agree that it’s high time an end was put to all this apathy. I’ve seen to everything, absolutely everything. Starting tomorrow, you, Gino, spend four hours a day at the YMCA gym in Santa Monica. Nickie and Delight, you will take high-pressure classes with that divine little man on La Gienega. Uncle Hans, dear, you will yodel and yodel and yodel till your larynx is back. And you, Pam, you will roll up your sleeves and get your teeth into Tray. Really, that dog is a disgrace.’

I doubt if there had ever been five more distraught people.

It was Pam who managed, ‘But … but, Anny — what … why?’

‘Why? That coming from you who groan and moan all the time about finances? Anny, why don’t you think about your career? Anny, Anny, Anny  … If you want to put it that way, it’s you who are entirely responsible, you with your insatiable craving for money, all the time more money! Don’t you remember how you took me to task one day, right in the middle of poor Norma’s problems? Of course I couldn’t do anything then, but the moment everything seemed all right for Norma, I was able to think about you. Poor Pam, I thought; it’s a shame that she worries so much. I had hoped to have just a little rest after years of slaving, literally slaving. But I saw it wasn’t to be.’

She paused, glancing mournfully down at her smooth white hands as if her fingers had been worn to stubs. Then she came up with a flashing smile.

‘So, the moment I was free from any other obligations, I took steps. If I had to work, I thought, I might at least do something a little more amusing than the constant movie-movie-movie drudgery, something, too, which could help all of you to find yourselves again. So I flew to Las Vegas and talked to that divine Steve Adriano with that cute little baby who’s my god-daughter.’

A hardly human squeak was wrenched from Pam.

‘Dear Steve!’ said Mother. ‘He thought my idea was sensational, absolutely colossal. Anny Rood and Family. I will sing, I will dance, I will do many, many things. It’s only natural that I should be most of the act, but you will figure too. That’s the gimmick. A little tumbling from the chauffeur — not too strenuous, Gino dear — a little dog act for the secretary with Tray, a little boy and girl routine with the son and the secretary’s secretary, and a little yodeling number in the middle with my uncle and me. Steve says that with the public being so besotted about the private lives of celebrities, it’ll be the smash to end all smashes. Of course, we mustn’t rush it. It has to be highly polished. But we don’t have to worry about the material. That day I took those sweet orphans to San Diego with Billy Croft, I made Billy promise to do it for us and he’s already almost finished, songs, lyrics, continuity, everything. It’s quite wonderful. Really, that boy’s a genius. By next Tuesday he swears he’ll have it all done and he’ll even be able to direct us for the first ten days but after that he’s got a Broadway commitment so I’ll have to take over.’

She broke off with a little sigh. ‘There’s my dress, of course. Just one, because Billy has me on stage all the time — just one fabulous dress. I’ll have to fly to Paris for it, I suppose. What a bore. But M. Balmain would never forgive me if I let anyone else do it and he’s such an angel he’ll rush it through. I honestly think, if we work, work, work, we should be ready in six weeks.’

She turned the brilliant, inspirational gaze on Pam. ‘Don’t you think six weeks is enough, Pam dear? I do hope so because Steve begged me on bended knees to open at the Tamberlaine on June Fifteenth. Such a good month in Vegas apparently. He beseeched me to make it an indefinite engagement, but really one can’t stand too much of Vegas at one time — all that sand. So I told him that, to begin with, we’d only consent to three weeks. Of course, when Ronnie needed me for Ninon, I had to call Steve and tell him we’d have to postpone till after the picture. But I’ve just called him again from the kitchen and he’s seething with joy. June the fifteenth.’

She was still watching Pam anxiously.

‘Three weeks? At forty-five thousand a week? Does that seem enough for you, dear? I really should have taken you along. You’re the business head of the family, but I didn’t want anyone distracted at the time because I felt all our energies should be put into poor Norma. And, after all, it’s so boring to haggle about money.’

I was slowly, very slowly, emerging from my stupefaction. Mother! All that hogwash about my having to attend dear Norma’s funeral! This had been Mother’s real reason for dragging me home. And it was this — how appallingly efficient could anyone be? — which had been behind her sudden enthusiasm for Delight. She’d needed a dancer. And — and a smooth, green-eyed red-head to keep me happy at home?

For a moment I merely felt automatic rage at Mother for always coming out on top, and anxiety about the appalling ordeal of having to appear in public, but soon all that was whittled away because I thought as follows:

Mother had had this in her mind weeks ago, long before Norma plunged. She’d not only had it in mind, she’d had Steve Adriano, who owned Las Vegas, and Billy Croft, the Industry’s highest-paid boy wonder, tightly sewn up. So Delight and I had been hopelessly wrong. All that bullying campaign to make a new career for Norma had been nothing but what it had seemed to be, just another of Mother’s famous crusades for helping her dear old friends. She’d no more wanted Ninon de Lenclos for herself than she’d wanted an attack of German measles. So … so … so … She didn’t push. She couldn’t have pushed. She, one hundred per cent, couldn’t conceivably have pushed.

Floating in a wonderful warm glow of Peace of Mind Regained, I glanced at Delight. She glanced back and I knew she was thinking exactly what I was thinking. Vaguely the realization stirred that now I wouldn’t be able to go back to Paris, but, as long as I was looking at Delight, I didn’t seem to care. Who cared about Paris? Who, for that matter, cared about plunges and paw-prints and anonymous letters?

Once and for all the Anny Rood For Murderess Society could be permanently disbanded.

In a moment Pam, Gino and Uncle Hans and Ronnie were all going to come out of their swoon and buzz like distracted wasps, but they were still paralyzed. Mother knew it and, taking a shameless Old Pro advantage of the dazed silence, gave a little merry-merry laugh.

‘Well, back to the kitchen. Here I am chattering — and no one’s getting any dinner.’

She swept away through the interminable Venetian length of the room. At the double doors, she turned.

‘Oh, Delight. Those articles we wrote for Photoplay at lunch time. File them away, will you, dear? I don’t think we’ll be needing them now.’

11

So that was the end of L'Affaire Norma Delanay. At least I hoped it was and there wasn’t any time to brood about it because from then on Mother swept us into a hell of classes and rehearsal and creative sessions with Billy Croft and heaven knew what. She did fly to Paris to order The Dress, but even that didn’t help much because Billy wasn’t much better than she was and, anyway, she was back again before you could turn around.

Billy’s material was, I had to admit, wildly original. We, The Family, only had comedy bits at the opening and closing, and in the middle with the yodeling number, otherwise it was all Mother. But Mother, needless to say, was staggeringly brilliant. Singing, dancing, clowning, there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do, and in a few days she’d carried all the rest of them, including Uncle Hans, way, way up into an orgy of enthusiasm. But in my veins there wasn’t a drop of No Business Like Show Business blood. I loathed it all.

At least, I loathed everything except Delight. She was just as bad as the others in her dreadful enthusiasm for work. In fact, she was so determined to shine that she had a couple of stormy clashes with Billy, who felt she was giving all too much of herself. Even so, Delight was always there, always ready with her own very special brand of inspiration and always, of course, enormously smooth and green-eyed and redheaded.

I’m afraid that, partly through exhaustion but mostly through Delight, I got to be not very good at writing to Monique. But I did write, and one night in our third week of rehearsal, after we’d been at it till about three a.m. and every muscle in my body was rebelling against my own divine talent as a dancer, all the old passion overwhelmed me and, spurred by guilt and nostalgia, I wrote her an interminable letter reeking with tender memories and hopes for a Romeo and Juliet reunion.

Needless to say, Mother nosed out the letter the next morning when I put it down for a split second on the hall table. I found her with it in her hand, giving it a gimlet scrutiny.

‘Monique Alain? Who then is this Monique Alain?’

‘Just a girl,’ I said.

‘Ah! The little escapade in Paris.’ I thought she was going to plunge to the attack, but Mother merely looked sentimental. ‘So dear clever Delight hasn’t monopolized you completely. That is as well. At nineteen — a girl here, a girl there, that is the healthy way. Flitting from flower to flower.’ She sighed for a moment over the emotional needs of nineteen-year-old boys and then, reverting to the far more important matter of business, submitted me to the Field Marshal look. ‘Nickie, last night I forgot to scold you. When I’m yodeling, darling, you must please, please try to look a little less anguished.’

Billy Croft’s original conception of the yodeling number had been to have Tray sitting enraptured while Uncle Hans yodeled and then howling whenever Mother opened her mouth. I had thought it a wonderful idea so, I suppose, subconsciously I was still playing it that way. But Tray had been altogether too whole-hearted and, when Billy had to go off to his Broadway show and Mother took over, she had changed it. Now, instead of howling, Tray had to roll over in ecstasy with his legs sticking straight up in the air while the rest of us registered our own type of ecstasy too.

‘A smile, Nickie, darling. You have such lovely teeth. Teeth always help so much.’

‘All right, Mother.’

She looked at the letter again. ‘Monique Alain,’ she muttered. ‘A sweet name.’ Then she swept away to yodel some more or sing some more or dance some more or have another lovely sparkling telephone conversation with Steve Adriano, who loomed mysteriously in the Las Vegas background and never actually appeared in the flesh.

All this time, of course, the Ninon de Lenclos project was going full blast. Ronnie, who had been swept out of our lives by Operation Las Vegas, was apparently making the best of a bad job. Although Mother chose to rise above it, you could hardly open a newspaper without being submitted to Sylvia’s lovely, ladylike photograph, and there was so much about her comeback in the columns that you’d have thought she’d spent the last five years in Outer Space. But there was a lot about Anny Rood and Family too and those were the bits Mother read.

One morning, about two weeks before the Opening, Lettie Leroy wrote:

A little bird tells me that Anny Rood’s act for Las Vegas is the biggest thing since Ben Hur. For my money, Anny and Garbo are still our most glamorous stars and they say the gown Balmain is whipping up for Anny in Paris is out of this world. Marlene Dietrich — look to your laurels.

Mother loved that. The next day she flew to Paris again for her final fittings. I could imagine the frightful scenes over hemlines with browbeaten little sewing women hurling themselves into the Seine by the dozen. Mother was the Scourge of the Haute Couture. I never could understand why M. Balmain allowed her to set foot in his store, let alone why he went on adoring her. I suppose it must have been something enormously French.

Four days later a telegram arrived.

DRESS DIVINE STOP TWO HUNDRED MILES OF PINK ORGANZA STOP AM BRINGING IT WITH ME SO MUCH SIMPLER STOP MEET ME PANAMERICAN FLIGHT TWENTY AT SEVEN AM TOMORROW STOP NICKIE NOT GINO STOP GINO MUSTNT MISS MORNING BARBELLS STOP PAM DEAR BRUSH UP TRAY'S’ HOWL PERHAPS USE IT FOR UNCLE HANS STOP DELIGHT PERHAPS IN THE FINALE....

It went on like that indefinitely. I was still reading it, making sure that the only item which applied to me was having to get up at six, when the phone rang. I was standing right by it so I answered it. It was Ronnie.

‘Nickie, get your Mother. Quick. I’m going out of my mind.’

The sound of his voice brought all my ‘peculiar’ Norma feelings rushing back.

‘Mother’s in Paris.’

‘Paris? For pity’s sake. When is she coming back?’

‘Tomorrow morning at seven. Ronnie, there’s nothing wrong, is there?’

‘Wrong?’ Ronnie gave a sepulchral groan and before I could say anything else he’d hung up.

The next morning I dragged myself out of bed at five-thirty and drove the Mercedes to the airport. Mother breezed out of her exit gate as fresh as a daisy in a new Balmain suit. She gave me little rhapsodic clutches and kisses. That was one of the touching things about her. She could never bear being separated from us for long.

‘Nickie darling, what heaven to be back. How’s everyone? Wait till you see The Dress. It’s a dream, and the customs men in New York! So divine. Making it all so simple.’

The moment we emerged from the ramp into the waiting rooms, fans from other planes started recognizing her. All the way to the baggage counter she was signing autographs and chattering to me in a mad kind of counterpoint.

‘Nickie darling, I’ve been thinking so much about the act … Excuse me, dear, what did you say your little girl’s name was? Shirley? That’s always a lovely name. I shall write Love to Little Shirley … Nickie, as I was saying, I’ve been thinking so much and I’m sure now that Billy was right. Dear Delight does push quite a bit too much. We must try to tone her down. Not just for the act, but for her own sake too. We don’t want her looking ridiculous, do we? … What, dear? Oh, is it your pen? Excuse me …’

When we reached the baggage counter, a hand-truck was already being wheeled in with an enormous amount of fancily wrapped packages perched on top of the suitcases.

Mother, sweeping through everyone, ravished the baggage clerks with a collective smile and pointed indiscriminately. ‘The packages - they’re mine. Twenty-seven. Do count them, please.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘Presents, dear - just little somethings for you and Pam and Uncle Hans and Gino and Delight and those dear patient servants and …’

At that moment a voice behind us said, ‘Anny.’

We both turned. There was Ronnie, looking like the raven which sat on Mr Poe’s pallid bust of Pallas. Mother, who would drive thousands of miles to pick up almost anyone who was arriving from almost any vehicle, was always childishly touched when anyone did it for her. She threw herself into Ronnie’s arms.

‘Ronnie, how divine. We’ll never get all this into the Mercedes. You can take the rest and drive behind us. Darling, there’s a present for you somewhere, but we’ll really have to wait.’

Already awestruck porters, garlanded with packages, were standing around us in a ring. While Mother swooped and organized, I looked at Ronnie and thought: Doom, doom, doom, doom until I had worked myself into a hysteria of anxiety.

Ronnie had brought his chauffeur with him. When finally all the presents were arranged in the two automobiles, he got into the front seat of the Mercedes with Mother and me. As we started off on the drive home, he gave a groan much like the groan I’d heard on the phone.

‘Anny,’ he said. ‘Oh, Anny.’

Instantly Mother became alert. ‘Ronnie, nothing’s wrong, is it?’

‘Wrong? Oh, Anny, it’s disaster. Sheer disaster. Sylvia …’

I knew it, I thought. I just knew it. As Sepulveda Boulevard seemed to wobble in front of me, I glanced at Mother. Even

she, with all her awful morning vitality, was looking worried.

‘Sylvia?’ she asked. ‘What’s Sylvia been doing?’

‘The Ninon contracts - they’ve been signed, you know. Weeks ago.’

‘Yes?’ said Mother. ‘Yes?’

‘And I thought that would be that. Once she’d got what she wanted, I thought that at least I’d escape from her in my private life. But, Anny, She’s been living with me. Every minute of the day She’s driving up in that terrible Jaguar, Mothering me, Healing my Wounds, Taking me out of Myself. And then - the evenings. Night after night, dancing at the Mocambo, tête-à-têtes at little intimate corner tables in Ciro's. I knew she was up to something. I just knew it. But, Anny, without you I was a broken man, exhausted, empty, a male praying mantis. And then, then … Oh, Anny, last night …’

I threw him a frantic glance and almost side-swiped an oil truck.

‘Yes?’ asked Mother briskly. ‘Last night?’

Ronnie gave his sepulchral groan. ‘Ciro’s again. Eartha Kitt. A particularly dreadful little intimate corner table. Sylvia, all delicious bare shoulders (She’s reducing) and gorgeous orange curls. Suddenly, in the middle of Eartha Kitt, she leaned across the table and squeezed my hand and said, ‘Ronnie, deah, isn’t this right? So calm, so relaxed. We’re really together, aren’t we? What fools we were to lose each other, what utter, utter fools!’ And then, when I could feel every nerve in my body snapping, she said, “Oh, by the way, I was down at Paul Denker’s office this afternoon. He’s not my agent, you know, just my personal lawyer, but I thought I really should show him the Ninon contracts. Darling, he thinks they’re lovely. But when I told him how in tune we are, how right together artistically, he thought it might be a marvelous idea for us to draw up another contract — an overall contract, say for two pictures a year for five years, with a tiny bit more money and perhaps a percentage …” ’

He broke off and groaned again. ‘That was all I needed. That was the one thing I needed to pull me out of my apathy. After all, the merger had gone through two days before. It was all settled. She could splash it over every newspaper in the country and it wouldn’t matter a damn any more. Suddenly I realized I was free of her, that I’d been free of her for forty-eight hours. It was the most glorious moment of my life. I leaned across the table — thank God Eartha Kitt was being particularly loud at the time — and I yelled, ‘Okay, play Eternally Female. Louse up Ninon de Lenclos so that, by the time you’re through with her, she’ll be a four-letter word on four continents. But I’m here to tell you that there’ll be no five-year contract, no tiny little bit more money, no percentage. Once you’re through with Ninon, I’ll see to it, with the last drop of my blood, that you’ll never work again, never, anywhere, not even on the sidewalks of your Birmingham birth slum.’ ‘

He spun around to Mother. ‘And, Anny, you should have seen her. All — positively all — the terrible dross in her character came out. Suddenly she was Medusa and she glared at me and she hissed, “What about your merger, darling?” And I hissed, “Too late, my sweet, too late. It’s closed, it’s fixed, it’s in the bag!” And then, still lovely and gracious, she hissed, “And what about your beloved Anny Rood?” And I yelled, “What can you do to Anny now, three weeks later when the file on Norma is slammed tight shut? Pay, pshaw, pooey.” And then, and then …’

Once again Ronnie had trouble with his 'and thens'.

‘And then — Anny, oh, Anny, she just went on smiling and pouting and tossing the orange curls, and she said, “Oh, my

darling, I think we’re getting a little mixed up. There will be a five-year contract and there’ll be something else too something far more cozy and, in the long run, even more profitable. Deahest Ronnie, there’s going to be Hollywood’s most romantic wedding since Vilma Banky and Rod La Roque. Ronald Light and Sylvia La Mann.” And, as I sat, turned to stone, she felt in her terrible pocket-book and she brought out, she brought out …’

With a palsied hand Ronnie felt in his breast pocket. His hand came out with a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it. It was a photostat. For a moment he sat gazing at it in despair.

‘Now we know how she found out about the merger. Now we know …’

‘But what is it?’ The words were wrenched from me.

‘Coming for her diet book was just an excuse to get upstairs and snoop. She rummaged and rummaged and found it in the drawer of the bed table. I didn’t find it. Oh, no. The police didn’t find it. The one who found it had to be that unspeakable …’

‘Found — what? For pity’s sake — what?’

Ronnie put his hand on Mother’s knee. ‘Anny, Norma couldn’t reach Miss Leroy on the phone so she started writing a letter instead. When you went into her room, she must have heard you coming and slipped it into the drawer. Read it. It’s a photostatic copy. Sylvia has the original in a sealed envelope in Paul Denker’s safe.’

He handed the paper to Mother, who drove me insane while she fumbled in her pocket-book for her scarlet reading glasses.

‘Read it out aloud, Mother. Read it out aloud.’

Mother put on her glasses and read:

Dearest Lettie,

You may find this hard to believe, having always misguidedly through the bigness of your heart been deceived by the appalling false facades of my disastrous husband and that elderly Swiss actress named Anny Rood. But you must please accept this as gospel and realize that it is your duty to your public to expose to the world the true nature of this couple of unspeakable monsters. As for my husband, not only has he been cheating the government for years on which I can give chapter and verse but at this very minute he is maneuvering the shadiest, most smoke-filled-roomed, criminal merger with Consolidated Cinema and TV which will net him millions that, needless to say, will not show up on his tax returns. And as for Anny Rood, not only has she been scheming in every possible manner to steal my Ninon part and my husband, but there are things I know about her — things from way back in Paris — which would curdle your blood. And, what’s more, she knows I know and she knows I’ve threatened to tell you. Oh, Lettie, She’s here right now in the house and they’ve cut off the phone. I’m terrified. She’s merciless; she’ll stop at nothing. At any minute I may hear her feet tapping along the corridor and I’ll now …

Mother stopped reading. Very slowly she took off her glasses and sat in silence.

At last she said, ‘That’s all.’

‘Yes,’ said Ronnie, ‘that must be all she got written before she heard you coming.’

By then I might as well have been driving blindfolded, for there was the abyss again. For a while it had all been lovely. Mother couldn’t have pushed to get the Ninon role because she hadn’t needed the Ninon role. But now. Things about her — things from way back in Paris — which would curdle your blood…!

‘Anny.’ Ronnie was looking at Mother with bottomless faith and love. ‘I know it’s all lies about you, but think if that got into the papers! Anny, darling, I’m hopelessly stuck. I’ll have to give Sylvia that five-year contract on her own terms. It’ll mean the end, the Gotterdämmerung of Ronald Light Productions. But … but … the other thing … Oh, Anny, you can save me from that. Don’t you see? Marry me — marry me now.’

What made it even worse was the look on Mother’s face. Never in my life before had I seen the maddeningly ‘on top of it'’ expression completely disappear. But it had gone now. She looked frightened and almost old.

‘Ronnie,’ she breathed. ‘Oh, my poor Ronnie. And it’s all my fault. If I hadn’t meddled, if I hadn’t tried to help Norma…’

‘But, Anny, you’re fond of me. I know it. It’s just this thing you’ve got against marriage. Anny, darling, this is far more important than any crazy principle. It’s my life; it’s yours. We can drive to Mexico right now. Nickie can drive us. I know you’re busy with your act, but it’s only one day twenty-four hours…’

‘Ronnie dear,’ broke in Mother, ‘please. You mustn’t think I’m not fond of you. I adore you and I’d marry you in a minute. It’s — it’s the least I could do. But … Oh, dear, for eighteen years I hoped and prayed I’d never have to say this.’ She threw me a despairing glance and then turned back to Ronnie. ‘You see — it’s the thing Norma talks about in the letter, the thing she was going to tell Miss Leroy. Norma was the only person in the world who knew. I can’t marry you, Ronnie, because I’m already married.’

‘Married!’ I gasped.

‘Married!’ gasped Ronnie.

Mother clung to my arm, which didn’t make my maniacal driving any less maniacal. ‘Not your father, Nickie dear. It was after your father. Just before I came to the States. It was a secret marriage, mad, reckless, completely crazy, doomed.’

‘But who?’ said Ronnie. ‘In the name of all that’s holy, who is your husband?’

It was a shattering moment but it was slightly less shattering because Mother was getting back to being Mother again. The bone-structure was reasserting itself and the good old One and Only, far-away, romantic look was taking over.

‘Darlings, I’ve had to confess, but you must swear never to breathe a word. Not for my sake so much as for his. I can’t tell you his name. If I did, I would never forgive myself, for in his own country he’s — well, he’s a National Figure, and, you see, shortly after I came here, there was a crisis. For political reasons, he was forced to marry quickly; there was no time for a divorce.’

I looked at her, my mouth agape, back being fascinated by her as well as quaking in my shoes.

‘But, Mother, who is it? I shall go mad! Bulganin? The Shah of Persia?’

Mother was enough herself again to give me a sidelong, rapier glance and suddenly the excruciating see-saw of suspicion which had been in my mind for weeks, started to settle down again on the okay side, because if this was all Norma had against Mother, surely it wasn’t enough for murder. Embarrassing, of course, for her distinguished bigamous husband, but for Mother what would it have entailed but publicity? Immensely juicy publicity, of course, but when had Mother ever quailed before publicity? Then … then …

It’s all right, Nickie. What do you mean it’s all right when Sylvia…? I mean it’s all right about Mother being a pusher.

While this split-personality dialogue was going on inside me, Mother had been watching Ronnie with mournful sympathy.

‘So, Ronnie, poor Ronnie, you do see …’

‘But … but Anny, what am I going to do? The most romantic marriage since Vilma Banky and Rod La Roque? Anny, I can’t face it. It’s beyond the bounds of human endurance. It’s …’

‘Now, now, Ronnie, dear, we mustn’t let ourselves get rattled.’

Somehow or other I seemed to have reached the turn which led up the canyon to our ‘home’. Mother leaned back against the upholstery, gazing straight ahead of her with the Field Marshal look. After a long moment, just as I was coming up to our gates, she said,

‘Ronnie dear, has Sylvia shown this letter to Mr Denker?’

‘No. She told me that. She doesn’t trust anyone, that python. She just hinted enough to him and put it away in a sealed envelope in his safe.’

With the faintest ripple of her brow, Mother looked out of the car window, saw our gates and exclaimed. ‘Why, here we are. Nickie darling, be a dear and stop right here. You and Ronnie can walk up to the house.’

I stared at her. Ronnie stared at her.

‘But, Mother …’

‘There, darling, be a good boy.’

Brokenly, Ronnie and I scrambled out by the mailbox. Mother moved over into the driving-seat, waved to us gaily and drove off.

On the terrace I found Delight, practicing our opening buck-and-wing with a professional ferocity that would certainly get toned down by Mother. I told her what had happened.

Soon Ronnie joined us and for about an hour, while all our insides, I’m sure, were doing Ronnie’s elastic band routine, we waited and waited. Finally Mother came drifting down to us through the cactuses and the succulents and the palmettos. She passed a hibiscus bush, turned back, sniffed delicately at a huge, perfectly scentless red blossom and sighed, ‘Ah.’

Then, while we all stood with our mouths slightly open, she came up to us and kissed us all.

‘Mother . ‘ I began.

But, ignoring me, she patted Delight’s cheek. ‘Delight dear, run in and get everyone, the servants and everyone. In the living-room. We’re going to have a lovely present orgy.’

As Delight hurried away, Mother followed her for a moment with a rather sorrowful glance.

‘Poor girl,’ she said. ‘So eager. So ambitious. I’m so afraid she’ll over-reach herself. It’s her background, of course. Such sordid beginnings, I’m told. Positively sordid. I must have a little talk with her. Explain about team spirit. Now, dears …’

At any other time I should have leaped savagely to Delight’s defense, but this wasn’t any other time, because very casually, as if she were producing a piece of Kleenex, Mother took a sealed envelope out of her bag and handed it to Ronnie.

‘Ronnie dear, I think you underestimate Mr Denker. He’s very homely, of course, and probably quite a shady little man. But he can be quite sweet, too. He adored my last movie. And — do you know? Deep down inside him, I don’t think he likes Sylvia very much.’

Ronnie had ripped the envelope open. I rushed to his side. Together we looked down at Norma’s familiar, illiterate, sprawling handwriting.

‘Dearest Lettie …’ I saw.

With a moan of relief, Ronnie started tearing it into fragments.

‘Of course,’ Mother was saying, her mouth drooping in an apologetic smile. ‘It’s going to cost you quite a bit, Ronnie dear. I swore, I positively swore you’d send poor little Mr Denker a nice check, because he may lose Sylvia as a client and I’d hate him to be out of pocket. But then, in the long run, it’s an economy, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not going to be half as expensive as signing that five-year contract with Sylvia.’

‘Anny,’ gasped Ronnie.

The warm glow. The lovely warm glow. She hadn’t pushed. I knew she hadn’t pushed. But even if she had, at that moment I shouldn’t have cared. Nor did I care if my stepfather was Colonel Nasser. I threw my arms around her and clutched her to my bosom.

‘Mother,’ I said. ‘The One, the Only, the Incomparable Mother.’

12

Three days before the Opening, Steve Adriano sent a private plane to take us all to Las Vegas — Mother, Pam, Uncle Hans, Gino, Tray, Delight, me, the Balmain dress and a colored maid called Cleonie whom Mother had borrowed to take care of it. For some reason, the publicity about us had reached a high pitch of hysteria by then. Every celebrity in Southern California, it seemed, was pulling strings to get Opening Night reservations and, when we boarded the private plane, we were besieged by columnists and reporters and even newsreel cameras.

By that time my stage-fright was so appalling that I was living almost entirely in a fantasy world of my own. In Steve’s plane, which appeared to have every known accessory except a Drive-In Theater, I sat with my arm around Delight because Mother, who ever since her return from Paris had become unaccountably stuffy about ‘pawing each other in public, dear — so boring’, was safely up in the cockpit with the pilot, teaching him, presumably, how to navigate.

But even Delight’s inspiration wasn’t helping much. I just sat looking down at the vast unnecessary stretches of desert below us, praying we would plunge to our doom. We didn’t, of course. A fleet of limousines — if three limousines make a fleet — was waiting for us at the airport and drove us down a single street, lined with improbable, mammoth-sized motels, which seemed to be all that Las Vegas added up to.

When we finally reached the Tamberlaine, which looked. at least ten times bigger than any edifice should, a huge plastic pyramid sat outside, holding up a sign which in vast neon letters, made the terrifying announcement : COMING SATURDAY ANNY ROOD AND FAMILY. We were driven past an interminable swimming-pool to a particularly splendid hacienda-type building which stood on the fringes of nothing — unless you call sand anything. This, apparently, had been set aside by Steve Adriano as our own private quarters. Dozens of maids and bellhops and assistant managers and the manager himself were hovering to receive us.

Steve Adriano was one of those overlords who believe in being powers strictly behind the scenes. On paper, he didn’t own anything in Las Vegas. For all I knew, on paper, he showed up as an under-privileged ex-G.I. who operated a single filling-station in Flagstaff, Arizona. But his unofficial effect was marked. The moment Mother inquired about ‘darling Steve' to the snooty manager, he blanched like an almond and the service we started getting would have terrified the Dalai Lama. There were flowers in every individual bedroom and so many in Mother’s that she could have set up in business as the Happy Gardener.

Gino put his finger on it. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘think of the dough that’s gotta be lost at the crap tables to pay for us.’

I had hoped for at least a little period of peace and quiet, but I was completely out of my reckoning. The telephone rang unceasingly with all the frustrated Hollywood celebrities whose pulled strings hadn’t worked. ‘Anny, darling, we’d just die if we weren’t there rooting for you. One table, sweetie, just one teentsy table…’ On top of that were the Vegas reporters and, the final crushing burden, a contingent from Life Magazine which had arranged to cover a rehearsal. Life always believes in covering things before they happen on the theory perhaps that they never will.

Less than an hour after our arrival we were all in the Mona Lisa Room, running through the act in front of an array of empty, intimidating dinner-tables to ‘get the feel of the stage’, while infinitely bored Life characters took pictures.

Luckily, we had to get out of the Mona Lisa Room by six because the current Dinner Show was due to start at seven. Somehow, after Mother had caused havoc walking through the Gaming Rooms, we got back to our quarters and there was only the telephone and the service to cope with again.

I was lying in a tub trying to get some sort of feeling back into my numbed frame when Gino barged in, grinning.

‘Hey, kid, on the double. Dinner with Steve Adriano in ten minutes.’

‘Oh, no,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

And then there the limousines were again at the door. Since Steve Adriano owned the Tamberlaine, it had seemed to me that he would live there. But it wasn’t as simple as that. He owned or rather ‘didn’t own’ at least six other of the tourist traps and, apparently, shifted from one to the other of them as restlessly as a Berber. Only about three people in the world had the super-secret telephone number which could always reach him. Mother, of course, was one of them. That day he was living in a big new joint which looked as if a very angry Frank Lloyd Wright had designed it on an uncomfortable camel ride in the Middle East. It was called The Hopi.

As we were whisked through the foyer and into a private elevator, I had alarming visions of grilled doors and tightlipped henchmen with sawed-off machine guns. But, in fact, the door of the penthouse suite was opened to us by a very handsome, very tweedy, very blond man with a boyish smile who looked as if he should be duck-shooting with the Duponts in Delaware.

We were all drawn into a huge living-room which was indeed immensely grand but which was positively littered with signs of cozy, simple, one-hundred-per-cent American domesticity… The dreadful baby which Mother had christened was crawling all over the floor and a very young, very pretty, equally Dupont type girl scrambled out of a nest of toys and newspapers to be clutched to Mother’s bosom with little cries of ‘Mary!’

Apparently my conception of Italian gangsters was terribly out of date. I hadn’t even realized they could be blond. But there it was and it was soothing because, since I never trusted Mother, I had been terrified that she had wangled the engagement by doing some dangerous ‘siren’ bit with some trigger-happy psychopathic killer. But it wasn’t that way at all.

You never forgot Steve Adriano was Steve Adriano, of course. The look of panic on the faces of the waiters who scurried in to serve us champagne was enough to remind you of that. But otherwise it was all very homey and Mother played Grannie to the hilt. She and Steve even changed a diaper together and, after a fabulously de-luxe dinner, we all had to go and look at the hideous baby lying in its crib.

‘Darling god-daughter,’ cooed Mother.

‘Dear Anny!’ said Mary Adriano.

Steve beamed and looked tweedy and thrust a pipe into his mouth. ‘It’s fine having you here, Anny.’

Mother kissed them both. ‘But, darlings, wherever you two dear things are is always home to me. Now, everyone early to bed. We’ll have to get our teeth into things tomorrow.’

Steve Adriano took us to the door. ‘Remember, Anny anything you want — any time …’

Anything she wanted! I thought. Why did Mother have to make life hideous for us all, singing, dancing, yodeling, getting her teeth into things? Why didn’t she just relax and have dear Steve and Mary write her a check for a million dollars?

But there wasn’t any relaxing, of course. For the next two days we just went on and on and on rehearsing and Mother got younger and younger and younger and more and more and more talented and more and more and more firm about ‘toning’ Delight down, while the others were swept up into a ghastly ‘trouper’ mood. All night before the opening, Mother tormented us in the Mona Lisa Room. Tray took exception to a new ruff which was slightly larger than his rehearsal one and for one glorious moment, during his finale dance with Pam and Mother, I thought he was going to bite Mother, but he didn’t. It was almost four by the time Mother finally released us but then, at least, she had the decency to say we could sleep all the next day so that we could be ‘lovely and fresh’ for the Opening.

Next morning, I awoke with a jolt, thinking: This is It, chum. I glanced at my watch. It was one-thirty. I struggled into a bathrobe and went out into the living-room. No one was there. We had a kitchen, but Cleonie refused to cook because she felt herself to be exclusively a wardrobe mistress and Mother had been too busy even for a fondue, so we always used room service.

I was staggering to the telephone to order breakfast when it rang. I picked up the receiver, still moronic from sleep. A lovely, musical feminine voice, said,

‘Hello, are you theah?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m here.’

‘Nickie darling,’ said the voice. ‘This is Sylvia.’

I felt myself shuddering all over but, gamely, I said, ‘Sylvia — who?', hoping that some miracle would make it Sylvia Sydney or Sylvia Marlowe or Sylvia Fine or almost any other Sylvia in the world.

My magic didn’t work.

‘It’s Sylvia,’ said the voice. ‘Sylvia La Mann. Darling, we flew up — Ronnie and me — at the crack of dawn. We weren’t going to miss a moment of Anny’s Great Day. We’re heah at the Tamberlaine. Wheah’s your Mother?’

‘In Iceland,’ I said.

‘Weah, deah?’

‘She’s asleep,’ I said. ‘She’s …’

‘No, Nickie darling. Don’t wake her up. Don’t you dare to wake the poor thing. But, listen, darling, just tell her we’re heah and we’re dying to see you — all of you. The moment she wakes up, tell her you’re all coming over to have breakfast heah. Dear Ronnie and I have adjoining suites, most discreet. But I think my suite will be best. Darling, do you have a pencil?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Then remember, deah, Suite Number Thirty-Two, because I’m registered under an assumed name. Brown. Mary Brown. It’s those fans; they give me no peace. Thirty-Two, deah. All of you. We’re just agog, both of us. We’ve got something frightfully important to discuss…’

‘Discuss?’ I managed. ‘What…?’

‘Now, deah, don’t be a nosey-parker. It’s a lovely, lovely surprise. I know Ronnie would adore to speak to you, but he’s in the shower and we’ll be seeing you in a trice anyway. Come, all of you, and we’ll have a second breakfast with you, a delicious late brunch.’

‘Oh, God,’ I said.

‘What, deah?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Bye, Sylvia.’

‘Good-bye, deah.’

For a moment I stood totally paralyzed. Then I rushed to Mother’s bedroom. She was already up and in her tights, practicing bourrées on her points. Mother had never had a dancing lesson in her life and couldn’t have done bourrées in the act, even if she’d wanted to, because of the two hundred miles of pink organza, but there she was doing them for ‘discipline’ and, needless to say, she had stronger toes than Ulanova.

‘Mother,’ I gasped. ‘Sylvia and Ronnie …’

‘Yes, dear?’ she said in her maddening serene way. ‘What about Sylvia and Ronnie?’

‘They’re here. Together. At the Tamberlaine. Adjoining suites. And they want us to go over to brunch. They have something frightfully important to discuss, Sylvia says. Mother, it’s disaster. You know it is. Something appalling must have happened.’

Mother got down off her points.

‘My poor Nickie, sometimes I think you’re almost as negative as Ronnie. How could anything possibly happen? Sylvia is absolutely powerless. We’ve seen to that.’ The Field Marshal look was tall in the saddle now. ‘She wants us for breakfast, you say?’

‘Yes. Suite Thirty-Two. Mary Brown she calls herself. Her fans.’

‘Then get the others. Wake them up. Tell them to dash into their clothes. Pam and Gino and Delight and Uncle Hans and … Did she invite Cleonie, dear?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘Well, get Cleonie, too,’ said Mother. ‘She’s a dear sweet girl and I’m sure Sylvia will be the better for knowing her.’

13

Cleonie was the only one who entered into the spirit of the delicious brunch. Sylvia La Mann was her Mother’s favorite star.

‘Me having breakfast with Sylvia La Mann?’ she said as, around two-thirty, we all trooped past the swimming pool to the main building. ‘My, this is going to slay Mother. And Missus Johnson. Missus Johnson is Mother’s friend.’

‘Sylvia’s lovely, dear,’ said Mother, smiling but looking rather abstracted. ‘You’ll just adore her.’

The adorable Sylvia opened the door of Suite Number Thirty-Two herself. The key, I noticed, was in the lock, put here, presumably, to frustrate any Peeping Toms among the thousands of fans who were persecuting Mary Brown. The instant she saw us, she flung out her arms to us, ready to embrace us all. Cleonie threw her for a moment, but she recovered almost immediately and drew us into the living-room with little individual pats and clutches.

She was looking incredibly thin, which was one thing I’d never seen her look before and, jittery as I was, I had to admit the effect was startling — skeletal body, huge eyes, gorgeous orange curls and an emerald necklace heavy enough to break her new neck. There was something else, too, something I had expected and dreaded — the cream-swallowed look around the mouth.

‘Darlings, how excited you must be. The Great Day. What fun. And I hear the act is fabulous. Everyone, positively everyone is fighting to get in. Sit down, deahs. All of you. You too — er …’

‘Cleonie,’ said Mother. ‘Her mother is one of your greatest fans.’

‘And Missus Johnson,’ said Cleonie.

Sylvia was all teeth. ‘Thank you, deah. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get deah Ronnie.’

Until then Tray hadn’t been visible but, as Sylvia glided to the door connecting with the next suite, he waddled friendlily after her. She saw him and screamed. I’ve often felt like screaming myself at the sight of Tray but Sylvia’s scream was ridiculously overdone. She even flung a hand to her emerald-laden throat.

‘A dog! Anny, you must know how I feel about dogs. They petrify me. They …’

Tray waddled on and she screamed again.

Pam called, ‘Tray — drop dead,’ and Tray, who recently had much improved, rolled over on his back with his legs sticking stiffly up in the air. But that only made it worse. Sylvia went into the most elaborate case of jitters and then keeled over in a dead faint.

I loved it. It was worthy of Joan Crawford in one of those Woman Of Steel Finally Cracks characterizations, but in a flash Mother was rushing over being all Christian anxiety.

‘The poor thing — it’s the diet. She must be absolutely starved. Nickie, take Tray away.’

‘But, Mother ... ‘

‘Take Tray, I say.’

So I had to pick Tray up, still stiff with his legs in the air, and rush him down the elevator, past the swimming pool, and dump him in our living room.

When I got back, Ronnie was there in a distinguished maroon bathrobe. I was so used, by then, to seeing Ronnie look more dead than alive, that his ‘This is the end’ expression didn’t make me feel much worse than I was feeling already. But the atmosphere was as elastic-bandish as any atmosphere could be. Pam and Delight and Uncle Hans and Gino and Cleonie were just sitting looking into space, while Mother and a completely recovered Sylvia La Mann lounged together on a couch, exchanging professional graciousness.

‘Anny, pet, I’ve never seen you look lovelier.’

‘And you, Sylvia. The thinness! It’s a miracle.’

Sylvia’s tinkling bell laugh rang. ‘I felt I had to do it, for the picture. I mean I’m convinced Ninon has to be devastatingly thin to project the spiritual quality. And I’ve got this fabulous diet. Eat Away Calories.’

‘But are you sure it’s safe? That fainting ... ‘

‘Oh, darling, that was nothing to do with the diet. It was just the dog. I know it’s idiotic to be so highly strung, but ever since I was a tiny child when a terrible greyhound bit me in my kindergarten, I just can’t be suddenly faced with a dog. But, Anny, the diet — you can’t believe how clever it is. You eat everything you want — absolutely everything. And then, for one hour every day, you wallow in a delicious hot bath with these divine salts, and the salts just eat you away.’

‘Eat you away!’ exclaimed Cleonie, looking alarmed.

Sylvia purred at her. ‘Yes, deah. I know salts used to be considered frightfully wrong, but now they’re frightfully right again. This divine man, such a deah friend, too. He’s an absolute genius. At five-thirty every afternoon, regularly as clockwork, I just turn on the tap and … But, Anny, deah, how absurd. Why would you want to hear all this when you’ve always been nothing but skin and bone?’

She rose then in a billow of skirt because waiters were rolling in wagons with the delicious brunch.

For one mad moment, as the brunch dragged interminably on and nothing happened, I began to relax a little. Was it possible that Sylvia’s new figure and her improbable capture of Ronnie in an adjoining suite had been the only things she wanted to show off? Was Mother right about my negative thinking?

Once again life taught me just how fatal it is to start relaxing, because a second later Sylvia, who, I had noticed, in spite of her ‘you eat everything’ claims, had only sipped a little black coffee, put down her cup, picked up a spoon and made a dreadful clinking sound on a glass.

‘Darlings,’ she cried, ‘now you’ve eaten and got your strength back, it’s time for the lovely surprise. I was determined, just determined that you deah people should be the first to hear. This is your Great Day. It is also ours. Ronnie and I are going to be married.’

There was dead silence. Everyone was stunned. At least I imagined they were. I certainly was stunned. I looked at

Ronnie. Stoop-shouldered, he was gazing down at an uneaten waffle. I looked at Mother then, because Mother was always the one to look at in a crisis. But Mother let me down too. She had withdrawn deep behind her ‘nothing’ expression.

When the silence had stretched embarrassingly far, Cleonie, who had wonderful social instincts, said, ‘My, well isn’t that just too exciting? Miss La Mann and Mr Light. Just wait till I tell Missus John…’

‘Thank you, deah.’ All the time Sylvia had been transfixing Ronnie with her pretty smile as if to make sure he was totally defeated and was in no danger of snapping. Now she transferred the pretty smile to Mother. ‘But, Anny darling, there is one complication — one teeny complication — and we want you to help us because you, as Norma’s oldest and deahest friend, are the only one we can trust. Now I’m convinced that Norma wouldn’t have wanted us to wait. Generous, outgoing Norma. Go ahead, she would have said. Grab your happiness, children. I feel we should fly to Mexico tomorrow and do it — just do it. But deah Ronnie — sensitive Ronnie — feels that we should wait just a little longer, till after Ninon, perhaps, or even until after one of the next movies we’re going to do together.’

I had never realized that cobras could have pretty smiles, but there was the pretty smile and there was Sylvia being as cobra-ish as if an Indian gentleman were squatting in front of her playing a reed pipe.

‘So, Anny, we’ve decided to leave it up to you. Whatever you say, deah…’ She paused and a tongue — surely a forked tongue — flicked out on to the orange of her upper lip. ‘Of course, it isn’t quite as delicate a problem as it might be because we do have Norma’s last letter, don’t we? I really feel it is the letter which should guide us. I believe Ronnie read you the first part of it, deah, but there’s lots, lots more…’

‘More!’ The word was torn from me. I just couldn’t help it.

Sylvia’s lovely tapering-fingered hand moved to her throat as if it was going to plunge down under the emerald necklace. Then it bypassed what was left of Cleonie’s English muffin and picked up her pocket-book. She snapped the clasp, peered inside and then, very daintily, drew out a folded sheet of paper. Even without her unfolding it, I knew, of course, that it was another photostat. She leaned around Cleonie, waving it at Mother.

‘Anny deah, don’t you think I should read it to you? I do feel it may help you to make up your mind. Of course, it’s all rather intimate. The bedroom, I think, don’t you?’

She got up then, waggling the photostat and smiling at us all, particularly at Cleonie.

‘Darlings, you will forgive us, won’t you? We’ll be back in a trice and then, Ronnie deah, we’ll both abide by deah Anny’s decision, won’t we?’

As she started for the bedroom, Ronnie suddenly jumped up and swung to Mother. ‘Anny, she hasn’t let me read it. She…’

But Mother merely put her hand on his arm and, without a word, followed Sylvia into the bedroom.

The bedroom ordeal was excruciating, not only for Ronnie and me but for the others because by then they'd obviously got on to it or at least enough of it. Ronnie was really magnificent. Somehow he managed to cope with a long conversation with Cleonie about a cousin of hers who had just been married in North Philadelphia. And then, finally, after about a quarter of an hour, Mother and Sylvia came back.

Ronnie turned to Mother, a look of wild hope in his eyes, but his wild hope died, as did mine, when he saw the two of them. Mother was walking like the lady in Desert Wind after she’d decided not to become a nun, and Sylvia, in spite of the new divine thinness, managed to look like a boa-constrictor which had just swallowed a water-buffalo.

As they came towards us, she gave Mother one triumphant look. Mother submitted to it and walked over to Ronnie.

‘Ronnie dear,’ she said in a dead little voice, ‘it’s hard. Of course it’s hard. But I do think Sylvia is right. I do think Norma would understand if you flew to Mexico tomorrow and …’

‘But, Anny …’

‘No, dear. It’s all decided. I can’t … I mean, I …’ And, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him anymore, Mother turned quickly away. In less than five minutes we were all scurrying out of Suite Thirty-Two.

The moment we were back in our hacienda, Mother disappeared into her room. Delight and Pam were seething with anxiety and questions, but I managed to escape and knocked on Mother’s door.

‘Mother, it’s me.’

‘Nickie? Nickie dear?’

I went in. She was sitting on the bed. I could hardly see her because the flowers which Steve Adriano sent daily took up most of the intervening space. I crossed to her and, as I sat down beside her, she flung her arms around me and clutched me to her. She was crying. I’d never known Mother could cry. I mean, if I’d ever thought about it, I would have decided that those ducts, whatever they are, which produce tears just didn’t happen to figure in Mother’s make-up. I felt perfectly horrible.

‘Mother, please don’t cry.’

‘But, Nickie, I love him.’

‘Mother.’

‘I know it’s absurd. How could I be loving someone again after all these years? But poor, foolish Ronnie. What I’ve done to him! What a terrible thing!’

She clutched me even closer and then dropped back on to the bed, burying her face against the pillows. The spread was pink, of course. Steve Adriano knew enough to have given Mother a pink bedroom. For a long moment I just sat gazing at her bleakly and suddenly it came to me that in spite of all my peeves and clashes with her, Mother had always been the Rock of Gibraltar of my life. Now the Rock had crumbled, what was there left?

‘Mother, wasn’t there anything you could do?’

A mutter came from the pillows. ‘It was another page.’

‘I know.’

‘Sylvia didn’t really trust Mr Denker. She only put the first page in his safe. The other page — the original — She’s got it, she says, where we’ll never, never find it. Oh, that awful, awful woman.’

‘But, Mother, does Ronnie really have to marry her?’

‘Yes, dear. Yes.’

‘But what did the second page say?’

‘Terrible things.’

‘About Ronnie?’

There was a long pause, then the mutter, very faint, said, ‘About me.’

‘About you? You mean — the secret marriage to the National Figure?’

She shifted her head. Her eyes had been closed, now the enormous lashes flickered up for a moment and then down again.

‘Oh, Nickie, if you’d seen her while I read the photostat. Gloating, she was, positively gloating. “Mexico for me tomorrow, dear,” she said, “or jail for you before teatime. That would be time. That would be charming, wouldn’t it? Anny Rood arrested on Eve of Las Vegas Triumph for Murder of Norma Delanay.” ’

‘Arrested!’ I exclaimed. ‘But Mother, who’s going to believe you’d kill Norma just about that marriage? What if your husband did marry bigamously? It wasn’t your fault. You haven’t done anything. You…’ Then, to my horror, all my old disloyal anxieties came rushing in. ‘Mother, there wasn’t anything else in the letter?’

‘Else?’ The lashes flicked open again and this time the eyes were their customary selves, giving me the sharpest of sharp glances. She sat up with a jerk. ‘Nickie. Really! Else? What do you mean — else?’

‘But, Mother…’

‘Ah, you poor sweet child.’ I got a flashing Irresistible Number One smile then and she was enfolding me warmly to her bosom. ‘Dear Nickie, what a help you’ve been. Such a kind, sympathetic boy. This is an anguishing thing, absolutely anguishing. But poor Ronnie. But there’s nothing we can do, so we mustn’t mope.’

‘But, Mother, I wasn’t moping. I ... ‘

‘Darling.’ She kissed me, stopping any more words from coming out. Then she pushed me away from her so that she could study me with heart-felt maternal love. The crying hadn’t done anything to mar the bone-structure. There was nothing but a few glistening, very decorative tears sliding down her cheekbones. And the look I was getting was the good old One and Only Field Marshal look.

‘Darling, do you realize what time it is? After five. Less than two hours to go. The Mona Lisa Room will be jammed. People have paid thousands and thousands of dollars. Whatever has happened, now we must think only of them. We must get in there and fight. We must give our All. So run off to bed, dear. Tell all the others, too. No sitting around chattering, exhausting themselves. All of us — to bed for a lovely, refreshing nap.’

And before I could say or do anything else I was bundled out into the hall.

All the others were huddled in the living-room and the moment I joined them I was bombarded with questions. I told them everything and it took a good twenty minutes to sate their wild-eyed curiosity. Then the dreadful reality of It descended on them and they all scurried off to their rooms. I was left alone with Tray.

For a moment I just sat there feeling that nothing on earth could induce me to pretend to take a lovely refreshing nap, but then, after a few minutes, anything in the world seemed less awful than sitting there, so I started back to my room. On the way I had to pass Mother’s room and, as I did so, I heard her voice on the phone.

I didn’t want to listen, but the voice was so broken, so desperate, so unlike Mother that it stopped me in my tracks.

‘Ronnie, darling, I’m so terribly sorry. Oh, my poor Ronnie, I couldn’t help you. If you’d seen what the letter said … It was hopeless. Quite, quite hopeless. Oh, Ronnie, we’ve got to do something…’

I didn’t wait to hear any more. It was bad enough to have heard that much. I almost ran to my room.

As I flopped down on my bed, the full horror of The Opening plunged down on me making an unendurable combination with the anxieties.

I lay there, praying that fire and brimstone would rain down on Las Vegas the way it had rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah.

14

But no fire and brimstone rained and, in a stupor, like a shaven-headed prisoner on his way to the electric chair, somehow I was trooping over with the others to the main building, somehow I was in Mother’s dressing-room, which was so full of cables and flowers that it was as if Western Union had set up its headquarters in the Botanical Gardens, and then somehow I was in my own little dressing-room which I shared with Gino.

Things went on, I knew — Awful No Business Like Show Business Things. Steve Adriano popped his head around the door. The most celebrated of the celebrities flitted in and out. Pam borrowed something. Delight came in and kissed me. And then, long after I’d forgotten even the basic idea of what I was supposed to do, I heard the ghastly orchestra in the ghastly Mona Lisa Room banging out what I supposed was Billy Croft’s ghastly overture, although it sounded totally unfamiliar. Gino in his chauffeur’s uniform was lugging me out on the stage. There were Pam and Tray and Uncle Hans and Delight. Dreadful clatters of knives and buzzes of anticipation roared from the other side of the curtain.

And then, suddenly, there was no curtain, nothing but blazing lights and soul-destroying glimpses of a sea of humanity. In the nick of time, the music became recognizable and I remembered what it was all about.

But, as I remembered, it was even worse because the whole opening, which once had seemed so wildly original, now seemed completely insane to me. They would boo, they would throw things, they would surge up on to the stage, rush us out of town and hurl us over the Boulder Dam. For there I was in my high-school sweater and jeans being a revolting cute son clutching a football; there was Delight being a secretary’s secretary answering a phone; there was Tray being a dog, scratching; there was Pam being a secretary at a typewriter; there was Gino being a chauffeur polishing a stylized bit of car, and there was Uncle Hans being an egg-headed uncle poring over a chess game. And the M.C.’s voice, over a mike, was introducing us individually; then he said,

‘So, ladies and gentlemen, this is Anny Rood’s family. An ordinary family you would say? An ordinary family?’

Count five, I remembered. After the second ‘ordinary family’, count five. One, two, three, four, five … Crash went the cymbals and then we were off. Suddenly Tray was somersaulting around Pam, suddenly Gino was standing on his head, suddenly Uncle Hans was yodeling and suddenly here we go — Delight and I were plunging into our buck-and-wing.

My legs were doing the right things. Against all reason, they seemed to have a life of their own and, as Delight flashed me a smile, I didn’t care whether she was being toned down or not, because dimly I began to sense that the hatred out there at the tables wasn’t hatred. There was alertness, even an occasional ripple of appreciation. And then the ripple became a roar and a thunder of applause because Mother had made her entrance.

She hadn’t done anything. She’d just come in trailing M. Balmain’s two hundred miles of pink organza. But instantly, as she stood there and did her shattering bit with the eyelashes, there was no one else in the world.

Soon all the rest of us were in the wings again and Mother was out there alone, doing her first song. Mother’s voice might well have belonged to a crow with a head cold but if it did it was certainly the sexiest crow since evolution got under way, and what she did to the audience was sadistic. There was dead silence, followed by deafening applause. Then she was singing again, then she was dancing a sort of mad meringue with the two hundred miles of pink organza doing inconceivable things, then she was kidding herself and all Sex Goddesses, then she was moaning a Piaff-type heartbreak song and they were yelling and yelling and yelling.

It was still a dream but not a nightmare any more. Our middle bit came and there we all were on stage again with Uncle Hans yodeling and Mother yodeling and Tray being enraptured and it slayed them. Then Mother was on her own again for what seemed like hours; then there was the finale; then the demented, interminable, hysterical reception, then we were all backstage and every celebrity in the world was surging and pushing and plunging towards Mother’s dressing room.

Fine, I thought, fine. Mother’s done it again. Now we’ll be stinking rich. Fine. But enough was enough. I pushed past Frank Sinatra, ducked around Audrey Hepburn, fled from Liberace and got back to my dressing-room.

Gino wasn’t there. He was, I suppose, taking part in the Victory Dance in Mother’s dressing-room. I sat down in front of the mirror. Well, one show over. Now there was the eleven-thirty performance; then there would be tomorrow two shows; then the next day’s two shows; then … A lovely new career for Nickie Rood. Nickie Rood, the divinely talented dancer son of the divinely talented Miss Anny…

Suddenly the door opened behind me. I didn’t have to turn around because I was looking in the mirror. Ronnie was there — Ronnie in a tuxedo, looking as if Dracula and the Cat People and Frankenstein’s Monster and The Thing From The Deep had all been sucking his blood for hours.

‘Nickie,’ he said.

I swung around on my chair. He just stood tottering for a second, then he dropped down into Gino’s chair.

‘For pity’s sake,’ I exclaimed, ‘what is it? What…?’

‘Your mother,’ he said. ‘Get your mother.’

‘But She’s being mobbed by Names. She’s…’

‘Get her. Bring her here. Get her.’

The suppressed hysteria in him was excruciating and there’s no one like me for getting infected by suppressed hysteria. I jumped up and ran out of the door. The corridor was jammed with celebrities who had been bulged out of Mother’s dressing-room. They were all smoking and laughing and chattering, caught up in the elation of Mother's Triumph. Somehow I elbowed my way through ; somehow I got into the room with the jungle of flowers, the mountains of cables and the struggling mass of multimillion-dollar bodies.

I barged my way on. Lana Turner. ‘Excuse me.’ Judy Garland. ‘Pardon.’ Fred Astaire. ‘If I could just…’

I could see Mother ahead. She was out of The Dress, being very simple and pro in a white terry cloth bathrobe, standing by the dressing-table, surrounded by Hecht and Lancaster and John Huston and William Wyler and the Selznicks and Lettie Leroy. Lettie Leroy! Delight, looking very wild-eyed and eager, was hovering on the fringes of Fame. Ronnie’s hysteria inside me was getting less and less suppressed. I squeezed past Delight, who didn’t even notice me, pushed between Hecht and Lancaster and gasped,

‘Mother.’

‘Darling Nickie.’ Mother switched the full dazzle on me, then, my face being what it must have been, the dazzle got a little steely around the edges. ‘Yes, darling, what is it?’

‘Mother, I …’ Suddenly there didn’t seem to be any way in the world of getting a Triumphant Star at the Height of Her Triumph away from Hecht and Lancaster and John Huston and William Wyler and the Selznicks and Lettie Leroy. ‘Mother …  I … I … I mean, can you come?’

‘Come?’ said Mother. ‘Come?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If you’d come. There’s something. There's …’

‘Ah.’ Mother was much better at it than I was. ‘Ah, yes, of course. How foolish of me to forget. Darlings.’ She batted the lashes at Hecht, Lancaster, Huston, etc. ‘Just a moment. I’ll be right back.’

Together we squeezed out of the room and through the gauntlet of evicted celebrities in the corridor. Ronnie had shut my dressing room door. I opened it just enough for us to slip in and then closed it again.

Ronnie, who’d still been sitting in Gino’s chair, leaped to his feet.

Instantly Mother said, ‘Where’s Sylvia?’

‘Anny … oh, Anny …’

‘She wasn’t with you at the table. I saw right in the middle of my meringue.’ Wouldn’t you know? I thought even then in my delirium of nerves. Wouldn’t you know Mother would have cased the house? She clutched Ronnie’s arms. ‘Ronnie, what is it? What’s happened?’

The celebrities outside in the corridor sounded like the wild life of the Upper Amazon. Ronnie put his hand out to support himself on the back of Gino’s chair.

‘Anny, I went … At quarter to seven … I hadn’t seen her. I couldn’t face her. I swear it. After you left, I locked myself in my suite. But then, when it was time to bring her to the Opening, I went …’

‘Fabulous.’ The word somehow articulated itself in the celebrity babble outside. ‘That woman … She’s indestructible. A great star … That’s what a great star is…’

‘The door between the suites,’ Ronnie was saying. ‘I’d locked it. I had the key on my side. I went into Sylvia’s suite. She wasn’t in the living room. She wasn’t in the bedroom. I went into the bathroom. And … Anny  … she was there in the tub. She was lying in the tub. She was dead.’

‘Dea…’ I began to yell, but instantly Mother’s hand was over my mouth. ‘The people,’ she hissed. ‘Out in the corridor. The people  … Yes, Ronnie? Yes?’

‘Anny, she was dead. There wasn’t any doubt. She was dead and … and I stood there, I looked at her and I thought: I can’t. I can’t call the desk. I can’t let them know. Ten minutes before Anny’s opening? Sylvia dead ten minutes before…? Anny, I left her.’

‘Left her?’ said Mother.

‘I went back to my suite. I locked the door. I came over here. I sat at the table. I watched the act. I … Anny, She’s there in the tub dead.’

I dropped into my chair. I saw myself in the mirror in my high-school sweater and my blue jeans. I looked indescribable.

Suddenly I heard Mother’s voice, ‘I’ll come.’

‘But, Anny, you can’t. You of all people can’t be the one to…’

‘Yes,’ said Mother, ‘yes. This can only he me.’ She swung around to us both. The mask was wonderful — all lines and cheekbones, nothing given away, not even the tiniest hint of panic. ‘Ronnie … Nickie  … stay here. Wait. Get rid of

these people somehow… Just wait.’

She slipped out of the room, evoking a roar of greeting from the corridor celebrities. Ronnie sat down on Gino's chair. We didn’t say anything. What was there to say, the saying of which wouldn’t turn us both into gibbering idiots? Gradually, it seemed, the Amazon noises outside got less. There was a sense of movement, of things being over, of driftings away. And then, sometime - heaven knew when the door opened again and there was Mother in slacks and a pink blouse.

‘Come,’ she said.

‘But, Anny...’

‘Come.’

And we all three went out of the Mona Lisa Room, through the gambling rooms, out into the foyer, up the elevator to Ronnie’s suite.

Ronnie took the key of the adjoining door out of his pocket. He opened it. We walked through Sylvia’s living room and through Sylvia’s bedroom and into the bathroom.

Sylvia, quite naked, with her eyes open, was lying in the tub. The cord of a green silk bathrobe, which lay on a stool by her side, was trailing in the water. And, beside it, half submerged like a dreadful child’s boat, floated a brassière.

My eyes seemed to be stuck. The bathrobe cord, the brassière, Sylvia La Mann, lying there, looking up at the ceiling. Her hair was wet. It was plastered around her head, showing the shape of her skull. Small, improbably small and oval.

Eat Away Calories, I thought. ‘Every afternoon at five-thirty, as regularly as clockwork, I just slip into a delicious hot bath and wallow…’ Then Mother’s voice, grating and desperate on the phone, ‘Ronnie, Ronnie, we’ve got to do something…’

Something had been done all right. Not just to Sylvia, but to all of us. ‘So Miss La Mann is playing Ninon de Lenclos.’ Once again Inspector Robinson, no longer just a crinkling nonentity, seemed to be standing with me by the grave of Eliza M. Bunthorne. ‘Well, I guess the file on Norma Delanay is closed.’

Closed!

‘How?’ There was something wrong with the bathroom acoustics, and Mother’s hoarse whisper was splintered all around the room. ‘Ronnie, how did it happen?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘There are no wounds - nothing like that?’

‘No.’

‘Then it’s the salts, the diet, a heart attack.’

‘But Anny, when this breaks… When the newspapers…’

'I know.’ Mother’s voice was very soft. ‘I know, dear.’

‘Me in the adjoining suite … you here for breakfast… Anny, what are we going to do?’

For several seconds after Ronnie’s voice had stopped, its ghost reverberated around the walls. Then it came again. ‘Anny - the photostat! The original page of the letter!’ Both of them turned simultaneously and were running out into the bedroom. I just stood there alone. Sylvia - the bathrobe cord - the brassière … they didn’t seem real any more, they seemed like things painted on my retinas, things which would, from now on, always be there.

Somehow I forced myself to look away. My eyes, at random, were gazing down at a soiled white bathmat. Tiles stretched to the right, they stretched to the left, they stretched beyond the linen basket, and there, beyond the linen basket. . . .

I went over. I looked down, praying that I’d gone out of my mind. But I hadn’t. There they were in the shadow where someone in a hurry might well have overlooked them.

Four perfectly formed paw-prints.

I’d always known, of course, from the first instant, that I was never going to believe in the salts, the diet, the heart-attack. But there’d still be a chance - an improbable chance which someone else might have believed - that Sylvia had somehow died by accident.

But here was the end of that chance. Paw-prints, a soiled bathmat. Paw-prints which must have been all over the floor but which had been wiped away by the bathmat almost wiped away. Sylvia fainting at the sight of Tray! Sylvia, in her bath, being suddenly confronted by a dog!

Ronnie, we’ve got to do something.

I could hear Mother and Ronnie rushing around the bedroom. I grabbed up the bathmat, dropped on my knees by the linen basket and wiped away every trace of Tray from the tiles.

15

I put the bath mat down beside the tub. I stood a moment getting back my strength. Then I joined the others in the bedroom. Neither Ronnie nor Mother was searching any more. Ronnie was standing, stoop-shouldered, by the window. Mother was sitting on Sylvia’s bed.

I tried to look at Mother, but I couldn’t. I went over to Ronnie.

‘Did you find them?’

‘They aren’t here.’ He turned jerkily and ran to Mother on the bed. ‘We can’t leave her there. I’ve got to get a doctor, the police. It’s the end, but that’s all there is to it. Get out now, Anny. You and Nickie. I’ll call the desk.’

I stood where Ronnie had stood at the window, looking down on the mammoth swimming-pool. There was a flood light beaming on it, illuminating all the little tables and the big chairs and the phony, landscaped palms. Although I couldn’t look at Mother, the whole room seemed to be filled with her personality. I waited for her to say something. She didn’t. But I heard her pick up the telephone. Then she gave a number.

‘Not you, Anny!’ Ronnie’s voice was almost a scream. ‘For God’s sake, this is my problem. This…’

But Mother’s brisk, normal telephone voice broke in. ‘Mary? … Mary darling, this is Anny. Is Steve there? … Thanks, dear.’

I spun around from the window.

‘Steve?’ said Mother into the phone. ‘Oh, Steve dear, could you please come? The Tamberlaine. … Suite Number Thirty-Two … Yes, dear. At once. Alone.’ She put down the receiver.

‘Mother …’, I said.

‘No, Nickie dear, please. This is a terrible thing, but she’s dead. There’s nothing we can do for her. We’ve got to think of us.’ The ‘musing’ furrow was rippling her brow. ‘Just sit quietly, dear. You, too, Ronnie.’

So we just sat quietly. In about fifteen minutes there was a knock on the door. Mother got up and opened it and Steve Adriano came in. He was wearing a tuxedo, but the old casual tweedy pipe-smoking well-bred personality was still going full blast.

‘Anny, I didn’t get a chance to come round and congratulate you. You were sensational. You, too, Nickie. The whole show’s fine. Of course, the girl’s a bit corny, but she’s pretty. It doesn’t really matter. Anny, you’re the biggest thing that’s ever hit Las Vegas.’

‘Thank you, dear.’ Mother’s smile was almost her normal ‘Aren’t they sweet to like me?’ smile. ‘But, Steve, something’s happened — something quite, quite terrible. And since this is your hotel I’m sure it’s right for you to be the first to know.’

She started to explain then, and it was fantastic what the ‘musing’ brow had been able to think up in those ‘quiet’ moments when both Ronnie and I had been in a state of collapse. With just the right combination of distraction and calm, Mother announced that Sylvia and Ronnie had flown up for the opening. (‘Such old, old friends. They couldn’t possibly miss it.’) We’d all had a late breakfast together and Sylvia had seemed radiant, absolutely radiant. (‘Didn’t she, Nickie? And so sensationally thin — a new diet.’) Then, after the late breakfast, Mother had been selfish — (‘tragically selfish as it turned out’) — and had insisted on Ronnie’s putting on his tuxedo right there and then so he could come over and stay with us up to the last minute, giving Mother his professional opinion of various small points in the act. When we’d left Sylvia, it had all been arranged for her to meet Ronnie in the Mona Lisa Room just before the show, but she hadn’t appeared. After the act, Ronnie had rushed back stage in a frenzy of worry. We’d all three hurried over to Sylvia’s suite. And there — (‘Steve, it’s beyond words’) there had been poor Sylvia, lying in her tub, dead.

‘It’s the diet, of course. Starving herself, and some sort of terrible bath salts that were meant to eat away fat. Steve, don’t you remember Maria Montez and her bath? The reducing salts, the hot, hot water, the strain on the heart? I should have realized how dangerous it was. I should have warned her. I’ll never forgive myself.’

All this time Steve had been standing there watching Mother and his blond hair very blond and his blue eyes very blue and his hands in the pockets of his tuxedo jacket.

At this moment, while Ronnie and I were just existing, Mother put a light hand on Steve’s arm and drew him towards the bathroom. They remained inside for a minute. Then they came out again.

‘So, Steve, you do see. It’s a ghastly tragedy, but there’s Ronnie to consider too. You know about Norma, of course. Only a few weeks ago. Poor Norma falling down the stairs and then Sylvia getting her part. Oh, Steve, think of all the dreadful gossip. Ronnie and Sylvia in adjoining suites. It was all innocent, of course, perfectly innocent, but you know what terrible minds people have. Scandal — so soon after Norma’s death. And then there’s Ronnie’s movie. Six million dollars invested in it, and you know how stuffy some banks can be …’

Steve Adriano suddenly took one hand out of a pocket and ran it lightly over the blond hair.

‘Okay, Anny. I get the set-up. What do you want?’

‘Well, I don’t exactly know. I …’

‘What about switching her to one of the other hotels?’ That staggered me. I even think it staggered Mother.

‘Switch …?’

‘What about The Hopi? Like to have her discovered there — tomorrow morning, maybe? That’ll give the boys a chance to make the switch later on when the streets are quiet.’ Steve was looking faintly reflective. ‘Yep. We’ll have her discovered tomorrow morning by a maid at The Hopi. Doctor Woodside can make the diagnosis and I’ll see that Inspector O'Malley handles it with kid gloves.’

He turned to Ronnie then with a boyish, almost apologetic smile. ‘I’m afraid there’ll be quite a bit of publicity even so, Mr Light. We can’t stop that — Sylvia La Mann being a star and cast for your movie and everything. But you’ll be here at the Tamberlaine and she’ll be at The Hopi. Even if you did fly up together, it’s reasonable enough that you went to separate hotels. Reservations are plenty tough, thanks to Anny. So don’t worry. We won’t let there be any serious damage.’

I knew Las Vegas was Las Vegas. Of course I knew it. And I knew Las Vegas was mostly Steve Adriano. But it seemed so wild — so wonderfully but so impossibly wild — that I had to make sure it wasn’t all going on inside my fevered brain.

‘But, Steve,’ I said, ‘what about the diagnosis? What … what if it wasn’t a heart attack?’

Steve blinked.

‘But, Nickie, kid, your Mother says it’s a heart attack.’

And he glanced at Mother and Mother glanced at him and I’ll never forget that glance because it was the glance of Like to Like. Between them, Mother and Steve Adriano could have ruled the world.

Ronnie had sat down on the bed. Steve stood for a moment with his hands back in his tuxedo pockets. Then he looked at his watch.

‘Anny, it’s close on ten. You’d better get back for the second show. There isn’t much time. Oh, by the way, Mary’s throwing a big party for you at The Hopi after the show. It was meant to be a surprise, but I think it’s better you should know. I think you ought to be there, all of you. Mr Light, too. It’ll look better. Okay, Mr Light, get back in your own suite. Just relax. Anny, kid, snap into it. Wow ‘em again the way you wowed ‘em at the dinner show. Be seeing you.’

The hand went over the blond hair, then it waved and the blue eyes and the boyish mouth smiled. He moved to the door, then he turned.

‘You wouldn’t feel like staying on another three weeks, would you, Anny? I’d jack up the ante. Fifty-five thousand. Maybe sixty … But I’m not going to push you. You just do what you feel like doing. But whenever you need it — remember, Las Vegas is always waiting for you.’

He went away then. Ronnie just sat on the bed, shivering. Very gently, Mother helped him up, guided him back into his suite and locked the adjoining door. She made him lie down on his bed.

‘There, dear. You see? It’s going to be all right. Now just relax the way Steve said. Nickie and I have to go. It’s almost time for the second show.’

So there were Mother and me going back to our dressing-rooms with Mother just as unruffled as if we’d been having a refreshing little nap. From the elevator, we slipped outdoors and went around the side way so Mother wouldn’t be mobbed.

‘Nickie dear, I don’t think we’ll tell the others. Not yet. Not till tomorrow, when it’s all settled. The poor dears, they’ve had enough to worry them and we do want them to give their All again, don’t we?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘And, oh yes, Nickie — you heard what Steve said about Delight. It’s true, you know. It’s terrible the way she just won’t listen. I’ve told her a dozen times that if she wants to make the stage her career, She’s got to realize that the whole secret of an act like this is balance. You know, dear, I’m quite worried about her anyway. There’s something — something I never noticed at the beginning. A hard, steely quality. Nickie dear, I do hope you’re not getting too involved.’

‘Mother!’ I said.

‘But, darling, you’re so young, so easily influenced. It would break my heart if I thought you were letting an ambitious little…’

That was all I could stand. I broke into a sprint and ran on ahead of her and, as I ran, I was thinking: I hate her. She’s a monster. I’m the son of the One, the Only, the Incomparable Monster.

Somehow I got through the second show. It was, if possible, a greater triumph than the dinner show and almost all the celebrities were back watching Mother again. After that we went to Mary Adriano’s party. Pam and Uncle Hans and Gino and Delight — particularly Delight — were bubbling over with excitement, being Conquering Heroes at their Conquering Hero reception. Their exuberance was so appalling to me that I managed to hide away from them. But even so I didn’t know how I was going to get through the party. Mother had no trouble, of course. No one had ever been more full on. She sang for hours and then Judy Garland sang for hours and then Frank Sinatra sang for hours and then Fred Astaire danced and sang for hours, while somewhere, presumably, out there in the real Las Vegas-sy Las Vegas, swift silent minions were carrying Sylvia down in a private elevator, into a private limousine, up in a private elevator. And then there was something else. Even though Mother seemed to have forgotten, I was remembering the photostat and the original page. ‘I’ve got it where no one will ever, ever find it.’ That’s what Sylvia had said, but what if Sylvia, being Sylvia, had left instructions, with Mr Denker or someone, in case of her death, to look …

But why did I care? For pity’s sake, what did it matter? How warped could I be still to be worrying about Mother?

I realized then that Delight was performing. I didn’t know how it started because I hadn’t noticed. But there she was, surrounded by indulgent celebrities, dancing and singing away like mad. In my sourest of sour moods, I found myself thinking: Is Mother right again as usual? Is that dancing, singing, red-headed dynamo, screaming for attention, the real — as it is laughingly called — Delight Schmidt?

Luckily, this was a thought I didn’t have to wade around in because, as I might have suspected, Mother was tapping a pettish foot. Right in the middle of fairly sincere applause, just when Delight was getting set to be ‘at it’ again, Mother rose in a lovely cloud of new Balmain and that was the end of the party for us.

Mother grabbed me into her limousine to drive back to the Tamberlaine. I was so tired that I didn’t know whether I objected or not. It just seemed natural that mother and son should be together.

We got home ahead of the others and Mother took me with her into her room. It had been years since she’d done that. Going to bed was one of the things that Mother did alone. But that night she kicked off her slippers and dropped down on the bed with a sigh.

‘Nickie dear.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘You’re not still horrified — about Steve and everything?’

‘I guess not, Mother.’

‘You’ve got to fight, dear. That’s something you’ll realize when you’re older. If you want to get to the top and stay there, you must fight, fight, fight every minute of the day.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

She reached up behind her neck and unclasped her pearls. For a moment she held them up in front of her and, as she lay there, watching them, something about her expression made me realize that, for some people, certainly not for me, pearls and triumphs and all that could have their points.

‘Darling.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘I’m so tired I can hardly move. Put the pearls away, dear.’ She dangled the pearls towards me. I took them. Her jewel box was on the pink vanity in front of the mirror. I opened it to slip the pearls in. Then the pearls just stuck to my hand because, neatly folded in one of the compartments, was a photostat. Shivering all down my spine like Tray, I picked it up and then the shivers got out of control because under it, folded too, was a letter — no, not a letter, THE letter, which had been hidden where ‘no one would ever, ever find it'. I knew it was THE letter because I recognized Norma’s familiar sprawling handwriting at once. As I stood, gazing blindly, two sentences glared up at me from the part that was on top.

‘ … not only me. Ask my former husband, Roger Renard. He was actually there when she did it …’

Did it! Did — what? Not the secret marriage. You don’t do marriages. Then …

‘Mother.’

My voice must have given me away because she was at my side in a flash.

I dropped the photostat down on the letter. I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to play this because I wasn’t angry or righteous or anything. I just felt I wanted to die.

‘What is it?’ Mother’s voice was shrill. She was grabbing up the photostat and then the letter. ‘Nickie, but Nickie …’

I didn’t look at her. I just stood there and I said,

‘So you did do it. Norma. And then, tonight, knowing Steve would fix it all up for you — Sylvia.’

‘Nickie.’

Her voice was anguished but it was far too late for Mother’s effects to do anything to me anymore.

‘Nickie,’ she cried again and then her steel hands were on my arms, pulling me around, forcing me to look at her.

‘Nickie, Nickie, believe me. I didn’t know those things were in the jewel box. I never saw them. I swear it. Someone put them there. Someone … Nickie, Nickie, darling ...’

‘If you want to stay on the top ... ‘ I heard my own voice and its bleak, winter chill seemed to belong to someone quite different. ‘If you want to stay on the top, you’ve got to fight, fight, fight every minute of the day.’

‘But, Nickie …’

There was a thing going on in my eyes. For a moment I didn’t know what it was — a sort of prickling sensation. Then I realized. I’d forgotten crying felt like that.

Her hands were still on my arms. I tugged myself free. I ran to the door.

‘Nickie,’ she called, ‘Nickie darling ... ‘

But I ran out of the room and out of the horrible hacienda and, because there was nowhere else to go, I ran on out on to the sand that just stretched on and on towards nowhere in particular.

The moon was shining. It was huge and round and yellow, a property moon. I thought, If Mother comes out after me, I’ll kill myself.

I don’t know how long I was there. Hours it seemed, and there was the sand stretching and the mountains, jagged and black against the moonlit sky, lonely, desolate, what Las Vegas was meant to be, not loused up with motels and gambling rooms and plastic pyramids — just nothing. I didn’t move about. I didn’t even sit down although my legs felt like watch-springs. I just stood and the moon shone and the sand stretched.

And then there was a hand on my arm. Its touch came so quickly, with no warning sounds before it, that I almost fell.

‘Nicholas.’

I knew it was Delight, and Delight, then, was the only person in the world who was all right. I spun around and, before either of us said anything, I had my arms around her and was clutching her to me. The feeling of her, warm, unresisting, unquestioning was wonderful.

‘Nickie.’ Her voice was as soft as a little desert breeze. ‘Nickie, darling — what is it? What’s the matter?’

‘Mother …’ I began.

‘Breaking up my act at the party, you mean? Being so tough with me all the time? Nickie darling, you don’t think I mind, do you? She’s a great Star. They’re all that way. They have to be. You can’t expect them to be delighted when pushing little girls try to…’

‘Mother,’ I broke in. And then, ‘She did it … She killed Norma. And — and now She’s killed Sylvia. It was something she’d done in Paris, something Norma knew about and then Sylvia … something ...’

Still clutching her to me as if somehow, because she was in my arms, the truth could be driven away, obliterated, I babbled it all out to her — all of it, the tub, the paw-prints, Steve Adriano, the letter in the jewel box.

‘Okay.’ I heard myself saying when it was over. ‘What do I care? What if she is a murderer? Who gives a damn if that monstrous old…?’

‘Nickie.’

‘She’s my mother. All right. But it isn’t my fault, is it? I can’t help it. I didn’t ask to be born. It isn’t …’

‘Nickie, Nickie.’ Vaguely I realized Delight’s hands were on my arms, shaking me. ‘Nickie, listen to me.’

Somehow that stopped the flow of gibbering words. ‘Nickie, you think that about Sylvia, but it isn’t true. Your mother didn’t kill Sylvia.’

Her face was turned up to mine. The moonlight was shining full on it. I could see her eyes sparkling with a weird frosty gleam.

‘The thing in Paris … I don’t know about that. Of course I don’t. But she didn’t kill Sylvia and, if she didn’t kill Sylvia, she didn’t kill Norma. Nickie, listen. After we came back from Sylvia’s this afternoon, when you were all sent off for your naps, Anny came to my room.’

‘She came …’

‘Right away. I hadn’t been in there a minute before she was in. She came to bawl me out, to tell me to tone myself down again. She rehearsed me over and over. Nickie, she was there with me right up until the time when we had to go over for the show. Don’t you see? She couldn’t possibly have done it.’

I hadn’t quite taken it in, but I knew it would come. I could feel a little bit of it.

‘But the paw-prints — the letter in the jewel box.’

‘It wasn’t Anny. Nickie, I can swear to that. It’s got to be someone else.’

Paw-prints. Not Ronnie, because how could Ronnie have got hold of Tray? Pam, then? Tray’s owner? Pam, who could have known about the thing in Paris? Pam, who would gladly have lain down her life for Mother? Pam, who, on the Night of the Plunge, had been running around the grounds, she said?

She said!

That was when it happened. It shouldn’t have made any difference. If Pam, out of some insane loyalty to Mother, had killed two women, it should have been just as terrible as the other way. But it wasn’t. Pam was Pam. Pam wasn’t Mother. Pam was someone you could think about or not think about, pretend, if you wanted to, that it was something you’d never guessed.

The glow was back, the lovely warm glow. I clutched Delight even closer and I knew then that I loved her. For what she’d done for me? Or just because she was Delight?

Who cared?

‘Delight, baby. When I thought it was Mother, I — I thought I was going to die.’

‘Poor Nickie.’

‘I’m all right now.’

‘Nickie darling, you’ve got me. I’m always here. You know that.’

I was kissing her mouth, her cheek, her hair. She gave a little moan.

‘Oh, Nickie, I swore I wouldn’t tell you, because of Monique, because of you being Anny Rood’s son and me being me … It all looked so grabby, so calculating…But, Nickie, for me this isn’t just a thing. Nickie, I love you.’

‘Delight.’

The warm glow was everywhere, even in my toes.

The moon, huge, round, yellow, wasn’t a property moon any longer.

16

I woke up at noon, remembering Delight, adoring everything, even Las Vegas. I ran into Mother’s room. She was sitting up in bed with her reading glasses on, half buried in newspapers. I threw my arms around her and kissed her. She kissed me back and we both knew it was all right. We didn’t have to go into things. I flung myself down beside her on some of the papers.

‘Hi, Mother.’

‘Nickie dear! Oh, do look what terrible things you’re doing to the Times! Boys — really!’

The thought of newspapers brought on the jitters again, but they were only mild 'Will-Steve-Have-Done-A-Good-Job’ jitters. I grabbed up papers one after another. Sylvia’s death was all over the headlines. She had been discovered in her tub in The Hopi at seven in the morning by a maid who'd been ordered to bring her an early cup of tea. ‘An old English custom.’ Dr Woodside, the house physician, on delivering his diagnosis of heart failure, had given a stern speech about irresponsible dieting and the marketing of quack reducing salts, and there were lots of references to the decease, under similar circumstances, of the late movie star Maria Montez in her bath. Ronald Light, interviewed in his suite at the Tamberlaine, was described as ‘staggered by the loss of yet another Ninon’. ‘Was Eternally Female’, some paper wanted to know, ‘a movie with a jinx?’ Sylvia’s funeral would take place in Beverly Hills next Wednesday.

There it was. Good old Steve. Nothing whatever to connect it with Mother. Nothing, surely, for Inspector Robinson.

But Mother was mentioned everywhere else. Paper after paper had given splurge after splurge to Anny Rood and Family. Photographs of Celebrities lining up to get into the Mona Lisa Room. Interviews with everyone from Mike Todd to the Governor of California, all raving like madmen. Lettie Leroy was as nearly hysterical as she would ever be:

‘After last night at the Tamberlaine, Anny Rood is hotter than the hydrogen bomb. ...’

‘They seemed to like us, didn’t they?’ Mother took off her glasses. ‘Well, we mustn’t rest on our laurels. Never rest on your laurels, dear. And now, I think the time has come for a little talk with the others about poor Sylvia. So confusing for them if they happen to pick up a paper. Be an angel, darling. Run and find them. Not Cleonie, perhaps. I feel I should have a slightly different little talk with Cleonie later on. But the others ...’

I alerted the others. They all piled into Mother’s room but suddenly, when Pam came in looking like Pam, I didn’t want to be there. There wasn’t any need for me anyway. I put on swimming-trunks and went and swam for the first time in the horrible pool. To my dismay, everyone recognized me. I was swamped by ghastly women and even ghastlier children, demanding my autograph.

It wasn’t long before I had enough of that and, as I started back to our hacienda in my wet swimming-trunks, I ran into Ronnie. For Ronnie, he was looking quite wonderful —almost human again. I told him about the photostat and the letter just that they were found, nothing more than that — and from then on he looked completely human.

When we reached the hacienda, all the others were streaming out of Mother’s bedroom, looking awed. Right after them came Mother in a pink housecoat.

‘Anny!’ said Ronnie.

‘Ronnie!’ Mother gave him a ravishing smile. ‘Excuse me, dear, just one moment. There’s just a little something I have to discuss with Cleonie. Wait, dears. In the living-room. I won’t be a second.’

She floated away towards Cleonie’s room. Ronnie and I went into the living-room. None of the others were there. They must all have gone to their rooms to lie down again and digest Mother’s ‘little talk’. The telephone rang. I picked it up. A French voice said, ‘Allo, allo, Mademoiselle Rood?’

Then I heard Mother answering on another phone so I put down the receiver.

In about ten minutes, Mother was with us again, sweeping towards Ronnie with both arms outstretched. He jumped up and she did her Enfolding bit.

‘Dear Ronnie, dear, poor Ronnie — you see? It was all right, wasn’t it?’

‘Anny, you were stupendous. I can’t begin to say ...’

‘Nonsense, dear. You and I are friends. Steve and I are friends. That’s all it was.’

Ronnie was watching her with that hopeless St Bernard adoration of his. ‘Anny, I’ve got to fly back to L.A. right away. Not just for Sylvia’s funeral. I’ll have to be there, of course. But it’s the picture … Anny, we’re due to start shooting in three weeks.’

‘Yes, dear?’ Mother was getting her far-away look.

‘Anny, what am I going to do?’

‘Do, dear?’

‘It’s all set up. I could can it, I guess. Just forget it. Cut my losses. But… Anny, you’re only here for three weeks. The timing fits. Anny, please, please, darling Anny, do it for me play Ninon.’

Even then when things were all right again — almost all right — I felt the butterflies stirring. ‘If one morning I open my Times and read that Anny Rood is playing Ninon de Lenclos.’ There was Inspector Robinson again, crinkling away like crazy. No! I thought. My God, is Ronnie out of his mind? This is the one thing that will start it all up again.

I glanced wildly at Mother. Mother, have some sense. For pity’s sake! She was still miles away in her ‘absent’ reverie. Slowly she came back to us with the faintest droop at the corners of her mouth.

‘Oh, Ronnie dear, I feel dreadful. I started the whole thing. It’s all been my fault. Of course I ought to do it, but I’m afraid it’s too late.’

‘Too late?’

‘A phone call — only five minutes ago. I took it when I was talking to Cleonie. They want us for three weeks at the Summer Casino in Cannes starting right after we finish here. I accepted.’

Wonderful Mother, she’d got out of it gracefully. I might have known.

‘But, Anny, dear.’ Ronnie put his hands on her arms. ‘That’s only another three weeks. I can hold everything for three more weeks. Anny, please ...’

While I quivered, Mother just stood there. Then, without any warning, she threw herself against his chest with a little sob.

‘Oh, Ronnie, it’s no use.’

‘But, Anny, darling ...’

‘Go. Please, Ronnie dear, go. I can’t do your movie. I can’t do any movie with you ever. I mustn’t see you. I ...’

Her arms went up to his neck then and she was kissing him with abandonment on the mouth.

‘Ronnie, don’t you understand? I love you. I want to be your wife. But it’s hopeless. I can never, never be. And to have to work with you — to see you every day... Ronnie, dearest, go … please … go this minute.’

She was dragging him to the door, clinging piteously to him, but dragging all the same. I just stood in the living-room. In a few moments she was back. She dropped down into a chair.

‘Thank God you turned him down,’ I said. ‘The moment they announced you as Ninon, Inspector Robinson would be plunging on the war-path again. You were absolutely right.’

‘Right!’ Mother put a hand up to cover her eyes. ‘Right, right, right! Who cares about right? I love him. Don’t you realize that? Dreadful, cynical child, I love him.’

It was sincere, wasn’t it? Surely, it ... Nickie, for pity’s sake, don’t start all that again!

As shame swept through me, I said, ‘Poor Mother. And you can’t ever marry him because of your bigamous husband? Is that it?’

She just sat with the hand over her eyes.

‘But, Mother, isn’t there some way to get a divorce? You can fix everything. Can’t you try to fix….?’

Suddenly the hand dropped from the eyes and I got the full gimlet stare.

‘Really, darling, all this dawdling. Do you know what time it is? The whole act has to be run through — the whole act. We can’t afford to get sloppy. Get Pam, get Gino, get Uncle Hans ...’

I started for the door, then she said, ‘Nickie.’

‘Yes, Mother.’ I turned.

She was looking lovely and musing again. ‘It will be rather fun at Cannes, won’t it?’

‘So the engagement at the Casino is on the level?’

‘Of course it is. Really, what a terrible, suspicious child. The Summer Casino. The height of the season. Elsa, Cole, Ali, David, Wally — all my old, old friends. And, do you know, dear, they guaranteed on the phone that Grace would be there for the opening.’

‘Grace?’ I said. ‘Who’s Grace?’

‘Her Serene Highness,’ said Mother, looking very European, ‘the Princess of Monaco.’

There were moments, I suppose, during the rest of the Vegas engagement, when an occasional butterfly fluttered, but it didn’t happen very often. That, of course, was due to Delight, because Delight was always there and Delight was the most wonderful girl in the world and if every now and then I thought about that ominous passage: Ask Roger Renard. He was actually, there when she did it, well, there was always Delight. Day flowed after day, and Mother was back deciding Delight was ‘divine’ again. I even started thinking about how many dozens of brilliant people had married when they were only nineteen and one evening I almost said to Mother, ‘How would you like to be a grandmother like Dietrich?', but I didn’t quite dare.

There was plenty of time, anyway, I thought, and, as I thought it, suddenly there wasn’t any more Las Vegas time at all. The Tamberlaine wound up in a blaze of glory. Steve’s private plane flew us back to L.A. and a T.W.A. public plane flew us to New York and on across the Atlantic to Nice, and one world was entirely gone, supplanted by the brand-new frivolous life of Cannes in a huge suite at the Hotel Suarez.

Her Serene Highness did show up for the opening and the opening, of course, was a Historic Event with every kind of French dignitary reciting long French poems saying how Mother was ‘inoubliable, ravissante, la reine des sirenes’, etc. Mother was delighted about the poems and about Her Serene Highness. She was even more delighted by the presence of her old, dear friends and every day, before being a Professional Triumph By Night, she was whirled off by All and Elsa and Cole and David and Wally to become a Social Triumph By Day.

Sometimes I had to go and be a Social Triumph too but mostly I was let off and then Delight and I would put on our bikiniest bikinis and lounge all day on the plage, getting tanned by the Mediterranean sun or at least getting tanned in those places which weren’t clamped against each other in the old French public smooch, because I introduced the smooch to Delight and it was something she got very fond of. Ronnie was bombarding Mother with daily cables and every now and then I had a twinge of panic that maybe she would give in and play Ninon after all, but that was settled in our last Cannes week because a cable came from the Palladium in London, wanting us for an indefinite stay, and in the same mail was an enormously imposing thing like a scroll, telling Mother that she had been chosen to be presented to the Queen of England at a Command Performance of some English movie. The Royal Summons was scheduled for about a week before the Palladium Opening and, by the wildest luck, coincided with Mother’s birthday. The combination was much too much for Mother. Instantly she cabled her acceptance to the Palladium and almost curtseyed when she replied to the Queen’s scroll.

Delight and I were with her when this happened and, in a flash of inspiration, I realized this was the moment of all moments for announcing the Grandmother bit.

‘Mother,’ I said, ‘Delight and I want to get married.’

I’d had tiny qualms because I always had qualms with Mother, but I saw right away that there was no need for them. The ‘Queen And I’ smile merely changed into a ‘Bless You Dear Children’ smile. We were both clutched and warmly kissed.

‘Darlings, I’m sure it’s a divine idea. Absolutely divine. A little young, of course. Oh, Delight dear, I’ve just been thinking. About the English. You know how they are, poor dears, rather dowdy but so appreciative of glamour. I feel perhaps I should have two dresses for London, a change in the middle. An English dress, perhaps. Dear John Cavanagh, so talented. So Delight dear, since you’ve worked so hard, been so loyal to the act — how about a little solo spot while I’m changing? A dance and a song? A French song maybe? That’s always so cute in London — a lovely zippy American girl singing a sweet little French song. Darling, do you think you could work up…?’

‘Oh, Anny!’ Delight was frenzied with joy.

‘It’ll mean work, dear. Lots of work. A Trenet song, I think. The English love that bouncy rhythm. And dear Charles happens to be here. Of course, we’ve only four more days. But I know dear Charles would adore to rehearse with you and there’ll be over a week in London before we open. So, if you work, work, work ...’

So there it was. I don’t quite know how it happened, but the marriage got rather sidetracked in the hysteria about Delight’s career and from then on she went off every morning to work, work, work with Trenet. Mother was plunging around in Social Triumphs. Gino had found a half-brother and was off all the time being Italian. Poor Uncle Hans, although he was courageously ‘old-pro-ish’ and doing the show every night, had something wrong with his stomach and spent all the daytime in bed. I didn’t feel like being around with Pam. So I was on my own.

I went on going to the plage, of course, because that’s really all there is to do in Cannes unless you want to go around chic bistros being chic. And, oddly enough, not on the first day or on the second, but on the third day of being without Delight, I started realizing how attractive the French girls were. I was, in fact, rather appalled by the things which thinking how attractive they were did to me. I didn’t actually pick one up, of course. I had enough moral fiber for that. But then, on the fourth and last morning, while I was strolling, minding my own business, through the beach umbrellas and the deck-chairs filled with older ladies whose swimming-suits were covered with jewels, I saw a girl lying by herself on the sand.

I just looked at her. I mean, I just happened to glance in her direction. Then — it was the most extraordinary sensation — she turned her head in my direction and it was Monique.

For one moment of great embarrassment, I thought, Oh, my God, and I haven’t written to her for weeks. What on earth am I going to say? Then she was smiling a dazzling smile at me and I remembered that French girls weren’t like American girls. They took things in their stride.

‘Nickie … Nickie, chéri…’

In a trice, as Sylvia would have put it, I’d flung myself down on the sand beside her and, before my mind stopped whirling, we were gab-gab-gabbing at each other. Then it was as if we’d never been separated. Somehow my arms were around her, we were both murmuring little sweet nothings, and then we were slipping into the heaviest smooch in French history.

The Mediterranean sun was blazing down. At least I guess it was. The Mediterranean sky was blue above. At least I guess it was.

‘Chéri.’

‘Chérie.’

‘Nickie.’

‘Monique.’

That’s when I felt a sharp rap on my naked shoulder. I sprang up guiltily, but my guiltiness wasn’t half guilty enough because the person standing there, glaring down at us from eyes of undiluted fury, was Delight.

All sorts of things had happened to my hair. I started trying to push it back into place.

‘Hi, Delight. Hi ...’

‘Anny sent me.’ Delight’s voice was the iciest voice since that maiden who was turned into snow in Hans Andersen. ‘She happens to want you at the hotel. But, judging from what I see…’

‘Delight,’ I said again.

But the fury in her face had got mixed up with tears and trembling lips and all the most hideously humiliating expressions and, before I could say anything, she had spun around and was running blindly off through the umbrellas and the canasta players and the women with jewels on their swimming-suits.

I turned, appalled, back to Monique. She was just lying there, her hair a wonderful sun-bleached taffy color, her nearly naked body as cute, as sexy, as inspirational as ... How could I have forgotten all that? And, on top of it all, instead of doing a Delight, she was grinning. It was a broad, warm, vastly amused grin.

‘Mon Dieu, what a catastrophe, no? So that is Delight — the so famous Delight. American girls — are they not strange? What then do they think men to be — good little boys always to be kept tied to the string of the apron?’

‘But, Monique, how — how do you know about Delight?’

She lifted one pink-brown arm for my hand. She drew me down again, down dangerously close to her where, inevitably, all the sensations started happening again. She started stroking my hair.

‘My poor Nickie, do you let her then bully you — now when you are still free?’

‘But, Monique.’ The feeling of her fingers on my hair was like Samson and Delilah. ‘But, Monique, how do you know her name’s Delight?’

Monique’s hand caressed down my cheek to my chin and brought my mouth against hers. Then, very gently, she pushed it away.

‘Ah, mon pauvre petit chou, you think I am here by the coincidence? How naive then you are. Do you not know you have the cleverest, the most wonderful mother in the world? She is not an American Mom. No, not the great Anny Rood. Did it not occur to you that your wonderful Mother might call to Paris? “Monique dear, you do not know me but I am Nickie’s mother. Poor Nickie, it is lamentable. There is some terrible scheming girl who wishes to make him her husband so that she can become the daughter-in-law of the so rich, so celebrated Anny Rood. Monique, chérie, today I send you by the cable money for a plane ticket to Cannes.” “Enchantée, Madame,” I say, “but unhappily there must be a delay, not today not tomorrow, but certainly the next day ...” ’

That was all I needed. Monique was a dream. Of course she was. Every base element in me admitted it, longed to stay there with her thigh against mine and her finger gently caressing my neck. But that was only my base elements. All my noble elements came out as rage against Mother.

The scheming, double-faced monster. Cooing about the marriage (‘Absolutely divine'), purring at Delight, giving her a special spot in the show so she’d have to work, work, work with Trenet and then calling Monique as a terrible temptress, cynically taking it for granted that the moment I saw her again I’d betray everything that was precious and fine. Delight! Poor, slandered, tricked, suffering Delight. I’d make up to her for this if it took me the rest of my life.

I started to get up. Monique’s lips slipped shiveringly on to mine. I wrenched myself free and jumped to my feet.

‘Nickie,’ she cried. ‘My poor Nickie, what are you doing? What is this foolishness? What…?’

I heard the voice trailing after me, cute, sexy, inspirational, the voice of the Siren, but I didn’t stop. I went on running until I got to the hotel. I rushed into Delight’s room without knocking.

It was disaster at first, sobs, tears, recriminations, but in the end it was all right.

‘Delight, dearest Delight, I can’t imagine how it happened, but it’ll never happen again. I swear it.’

‘Oh, Nickie, I’m sorry, too. I — I got so hickish, so San Bernadino.’

‘It’s all Mother. Plotting, scheming. To hell with Mother. We’ll get married anyway. When we get to London. You must be able to get married in London.’

‘But, Nickie dear, you’re under age.’

‘Then I’ll fake my age. I’ll ...’

‘No, no, Nickie, don’t be silly. You’d never be happy breaking with your mother. You know that. Nor would I really. I’d feel such a heel. We’ve got to convince her. That’s all. Somehow or other we’ve got to convince her she’s wrong about me being a grabby little girl from the gutter.’

‘Gutter. Look who’s talking about gutters!’

And I thought, with rage, of Mother’s beginnings. Mother who had invented the gutter. Mother who’d been born in a Bulgarian trunk. Mother who — Ask Roger Renard. He was actually there when she did it.

‘No, Nickie.’ Delight was in my arms, caressing my hair.

‘Somehow we’ve got to make it all right with Anny. I can wait. Of course I can wait because I love you.’

‘Oh, Delight, baby, I love you too.’

How conceivably could it have happened while I was saying that, while I was holding her close, kissing her, that a demoralizing memory came of Monique lying on the warm sand with her pink-brown legs and her pink-brown arms and her shimmering sun-bleached hair?

That night was our final night at the Casino and it was just as gala as the opening, with even more celebrities reciting even longer poems about Mother. I stood smoldering on the stage while she bowed, thinking up poems myself which were far more to the point. And then, after the show, she was whisked away for her final Social Triumph by Elsa and Schiaparelli and a lot of Greek gentlemen called Onassis and Nyarchos and things like that. It was about two-thirty when finally Delight and I, hand in hand, went out for the last time through the back stage-doorish entrance from the Casino.

As we started out into the gardens, we ran into a man. He was a very little man in a very French tuxedo with a face like a rather pleasant mouse.

‘Pardon,’ he said.

‘Monsieur,’ I said.

‘In the Casino,’ he went on in French, ‘they told me I might catch Miss Rood coming out. I know it is very late but I have just arrived in Cannes and I saw in the journals that this was her final night. I would very much like to see her. It has been such a long time — an old, old friend.’

He bowed then to Delight and, after Delight, to me. ‘The name,’ he said, ‘is Roger Renard.’

17

At any other time that name would have started a stampede of butterflies, but now, infuriated as I was with Mother, wishing her every ill, I found it gave me a morbid thrill. I glanced at Delight. Delight, too, I could see, was caught up in a kind of awed fascination.

‘Not the Roger Renard!’ I said in French. ‘Not the Monsieur who was married to Norma Delanay!’

‘Norma,’ exclaimed the little man. ‘You know then poor Norma?’

‘I’m Anny’s son,’ I said and I introduced Delight and, suddenly, while I was introducing, I knew what I was going to do. ‘M. Renard, I’m afraid Mother’s off at some party but would you perhaps do us the honor of taking a glass with us?’

M. Renard threw a very French glance from Delight to me. ‘But, Monsieur, you and your lady friend ... no doubt you wish to be alone.’

‘No,’ said Delight eagerly. ‘Not at all. Tell him, Nickie not at all.’

So I said not at all in French and M. Renard accepted the invitation and we all got into a taxi and started out for one of those bistros looking over the Vieux Port, which stay open indefinitely. And all the time in the taxi I was thinking: Now we’ll know what Norma knew. Finally, we’ll know what Mother did when Roger Renard was actually there. Part of me, a very shadowy part, murmured: Watch out, Nickie. You’ll be sorry. But it wasn’t any match for my rage at Mother’s meddlings or — I’ve got to admit — my curiosity.

As we drifted through the warm summer night air of the bistro towards one of the outdoor tables, Roger Renard was a little ahead of us.

‘We’ll get him tight,’ I whispered to Delight.

‘Tight?’

‘That’s the only way. Get him tight and charm him. You charm him, be the fatalest femme since Poppaea.’

Delight clung on to my elbow. ‘You mean — Roger Renard was actually there when she did it?’

‘Yes.’

‘But, Nickie — should we?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Definitely yes.’

Then we were all at a table and I was ordering champagne and Delight, who couldn’t speak any French except the lyrics of M. Trenet’s song, was beaming and looking voluptuous and, for all I knew, nuzzling knees under the table, while I talked animatedly on about Norma and how fond of her I’d been and wasn’t it awful what had happened and how wonderful it must have been to have known Norma and Mother in the old days.

To my joy I began to see that M. Renard, unlike almost every other Frenchman in the world, wasn’t very good at holding his liquor. Maybe, of course, it was a combination of champagne and Delight’s devastating long-lashed glances, but first he grew friendly, then he grew friendlier, then he grew positively expansive. And every time he drained a glass, I drained a glass until I found I was feeling rather peculiar, but I was too excited to care.

When the first bottle was over, I ordered another and then another, and by the time we were deep into the third and both time and space started seeming to do very peculiar things, I saw my opening.

M. Renard, whose expansiveness had turned into heartbreaking melancholy, had gone on for hours about how bad times were for him, how there was a job here, oui, a job there, bien sûr, but it was nothing like the old days when he was one of the first seven cameramen in the French Motion Picture Industry.

‘Ah, Monsieur, yes.’ He leaned back on his rather rickety chair and gazed up at a hideously pruned plane tree which made a sort of arbor above us. ‘You — you are young. Perhaps you will not believe it. But in the old days it was always Roger Renard. Something important happens? Ask Roger Renard. A new star is to be groomed. Will she do? Is she photogénique? Ask Roger Renard. There is An Eye. O là là, there is a cameraman with an Eye. Why, Monsieur, would you believe it? That’s how Anny’s career started. Yes, Monsieur, you might almost say the man who discovered the Great Anny Rood, the man who made her what she is today, was none other than Roger Renard.’

The table seemed to be wobbling slightly but that didn’t matter. I plunged in.

‘Tell us, Monsieur. Mother’s start. Mother’s sudden surge up from the gutter. What could be more inspiring? Tell us. How did it happen?’

‘Ah,’ sighed M. Renard and, for the first time, filled his empty glass from the bottle without an enormous amount of ‘permettez, Monsieurs'. ‘The Great Anny Rood! The beginnings of the Great Anny Rood.’

Then he was off. As I listened, fascinated, wishing the table wouldn’t sway, wishing Delight could understand French and wishing, just a little, that I’d never started this in the first place, the saga began.

There’d been two producers, a M. Dupont and a M. Picquot. M. Dupont had been the genius. M. Picquot had had the firmer control of the money for the backing. M. Dupont and M. Picquot had bought a sensational script with a sensational part in it for a woman. Who should they cast in it? Get Roger Renard, that wonderful Eye. So M. Renard had been hired as cameraman and the search had begun. M. Renard, whose Eye hadn’t been wonderful enough to keep him from marrying Norma, had tried, needless to say, to push Norma but, needless to say, that hadn’t got anywhere. Then one day, while M. Picquot was off somewhere in Lyon making sure of his backing, M. Dupont had gone to a vaudeville show called Hola Hé, and there had been Mother helping Uncle Hans to yodel. One look at Mother and M. Dupont had said, ‘This is it'. M. Dupont had gone backstage and talked to Mother. ‘You,’ M. Dupont had said, ‘are it.’ And the next morning he had called Roger Renard and said, ‘Roger, I have found her.’ And then he got Roger to meet Mother at a café near the Étoile and Roger Renard had used the Eye and had seen instantly that here was a great star, and they had all drunk Cinzano Blanes, toasting Mother’s future. ‘Ah,’ said M. Renard, lurching somewhat across the table for the champagne bottle. I lurched first and splashed some wine into his glass and some into mine and started splashing some into Delight's, who said, ‘No, Nickie. No more.’

‘Ah,’ said M. Renard again. ‘There it was. Success had swooped down for the poor little girl, the unknown, humble, obscure little assistant to the yodeller. Or so it had seemed. But success’ — Mr. Renard kissed his fingers at something or other — 'she is a fickle protectrish … pro …’

‘Protectrice?’ I said.

M. Renard beamed at me and then beamed at Delight and suddenly, like a terrifying crab, his hand scuttled across the table and pinched her forearm. The beam went away then and a look of great lugubrosity took its place.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Poor Anny. For there was still M. Picquot, M. Picquot, who was in Lyon organizing the capital, M. Picquot, an homme très sérieux with a rather plump mistress who was called Yvette. Non, j'ai fait une erreur. C'était Madeleine … A voluptuous woman, yes, a worthy mistress for an homme sérieux, but plump. And that is not right for the movies, Monsieur. Plumpness and the camera — they do not make a wedding.’

I knew he was wandering and I knew it was up to me to get him back on to the track, but my mind seemed to be wandering too. With a heroic effort, I said,

‘But — what happened, M. Renard? M. Picquot came back from Lyon?’

‘Ah. M. Picquot sends a telegram from Lyon. He will arrive the next day at the Gare de Lyon. And M. Picquot has to meet Anny too for he too must okay her. So M. Dupont says to me, ‘Who best can convince M. Picquot that this Anny Rood she is a great, great star? Not me, for M. Picquot and I have our differences, but it is you, Roger. You — with your Eye. You will be the one.’ So the next day I meet M. Picquot at the Gare de Lyon, although I have little time, being then on another movie, and I take him in a taxi to the little hotel where Anny is living. In the taxi M. Picquot says, ‘So you and Dupont have found our star?’ And I said, “Yes, she is ravishing. C'est une merveille.” And M. Picquot says, “I will inspect her, this merveille, but it is already decided in my mind. It came to me in Lyon when I was lying again with Madame Ma Femme. There is only one woman who is perfect for this part and this is my Madeleine.” ’

M. Renard picked up his empty glass, tilted it exaggeratedly to his lips and when nothing happened he giggled. ‘Ah, my heart sank to my boots. You can imagine. For I knew M. Picquot. Not a genius like M. Dupont, no, but a man who, when his mind is made up, digs in, in with his heels. So I try to argue, but all the time it does not work and we come to this little hotel where Anny lives. The squalor. You cannot imagine. Way, way up beyond Montmartre, a worker’s quartier of a sordidness that is not imaginable. And there, in a lamentable little suite of two rooms, is Anny because M. Dupont has alerted her and she is — ah, the poor girl, she has done everything to make herself beautiful, all is perfection. The Eye looks. It says, Never in a thousand years can there be such perfection of bone for the cameras. And I introduce them and M. Picquot looks at her and he grunts and then he says, “Mademoiselle, I am truly sorry, but the part is already taken.” And to see Anny’s face! I shall never forget; it was the face of all women, all struggling women with the courage, the ferocity to reach to the top, looking at a man who is saying to her, “I am sorry, Mademoiselle, but the role is taken.” And then ... and then …’

Some dreadful memory of Ronnie’s ‘and thens’ swept over me. Suddenly, even though everything was wobbling and swimming around me, some part of me, deep inside, was sober again — horribly, terrifyingly sober and it was thinking : Didn’t I warn you? Didn’t I say it would be disaster?

Delight was leaning tensely forward in her chair. She hadn’t been understanding, of course, but she must have understood enough to make her look the way she did.

‘And — ’ I said in a sort of groan.

‘Ah.’ Roger Renard’s mouth was crumpling in nostalgic sympathy. ‘My heart, it is bleeding. But what can I do? The one with the money — who is he but M. Picquot? And it is late and I have my engagement at the distant studio. So I have to go away. But before I go away, I plead once more. “Ah, M. Picquot, Madeleine, she is a woman of many charms, but this one — this Anny Rood — this is something, this is what does not happen every day.” But M. Picquot had the heels dug in and, as I leave, once again, I hear him say, “I am desolated, Mademoiselle. M. Dupont is ravished to have you for the part, but unhappily M. Dupont is only the one half of Picquot and Dupont and this part of Dupont and Picquot has already filled the role.” ’

M. Renard took a very large white handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his tuxedo and mopped his face. The butterflies were there, of course they were, and they were worse than they had ever been because now they were butterflies rendered absolutely Bacchic by champagne.

‘But ...’ I said, ‘ ... but M. Renard, it can’t have ended that way because — because Mother got the part.’

‘Ah,’ said M. Renard, reappearing from behind the handkerchief with the happiest of beams on his mouse face. ‘Have I not said that success she is the most fickle of protectresses? The stair-rail in Anny’s hotel — it was terrible, shocking, the condition of the whole hotel, it was inouï. What happens? I leave. Soon after me. M. Picquot leaves too and, as he leaves — M. Picquot was a bulky man — he leans on the stair-rail and ... and …’

‘And!’ I gasped.

‘Pan! goes the stair-rail. Crash goes M. Picquot. Five étages he falls into the foyer. Poor M. Picquot. But there was no pain, they say. The neck it was broken — instantly.’

M. Renard picked up the empty champagne bottle and looked at it blurredly.

‘Mon Dieu, quelle chance, n'est-ce pas? But fortune favors her own. Without M. Picquot, all the money comes under the control of M. Dupont. There were, of course, the police. They make trouble for Anny, so cynical, so unsympathetic, the flics. But what do they prove? Nothing but that M. Picquot falls. So all is well. The movie is made. Anny Rood, she is a sensation — a triumph.’

He put the bottle down on the table and looked as if he might pinch Delight again.

Being drunk and sober at the same time was the most awful sensation. We knew now what Norma and Sylvia had known. Of course we did. But how could I face it? How could anyone face it? And then, making it even more unendurable, I realized that I must have been there at the time. A terrible baby. Where? In the other room, back in the other room of the sordid little suite?

Wildly, clutching around for something to cling to, I blurted, ‘But she can’t have been living alone. Someone else must have been there in the back room. Pam. Of course Pam.’

‘Pam?’ echoed M. Renard.

‘You must remember. Pam et Ses Copains. The lady with the dog act in the vaudeville show. The lady …’

‘Ah, the vaudeville. Holà, Hé.’ Roger Renard’s hand had crawled very slyly to Delight’s arm and was lying along it a crab at rest. ‘While Anny is waiting for M. Picquot to return from Lyon, Holà Hé, she must leave for Milano. So Anny abandons her job. One week before they have gone to Milano and there is Anny stranded in Paris alone — except, perhaps, for her husband.’

‘Her husband!’ I exclaimed.

‘But what was that? It was not a real marriage. Perhaps even the husband he had gone too. For it was just a convenance. She explains this to us — to M. Dupont and me, for we have to know. She was a widow from a Czech. The Czechs then, they had been swallowed up by M. Hitler. To be a Czech in Paris was no good any more — no residence rights, no work permits. So for this she had married — for her work permit to be able to live.’

A fake marriage for a work permit? But what conceivably could that have to do with the second marriage as described by Mother? ‘In his own country, dears, he’s a national figure.’ Lies! Just some more of Mother’s unending fabrications.

‘But, Monsieur, who was her husband?’

‘Her husband?’ M. Renard’s head was sinking slowly forward. ‘Ah, who could remember such things, Monsieur? Some little person. Some little acrobat, some tumbler in the vaudeville sans doute. ...’

His head reached his arms, which were straddled across the table. It became buried in them. I looked at him frantically. He started to snore.

‘Nickie!’ That was the first time I’d remembered Delight in minutes. ‘Nickie, wake him up.’

‘What’s the use?’

‘But, Nickie — what did he say? I’m going out of my mind.’

I got up like a drunken corpse. I paid the waiter. I asked if it was all right to leave our friend sleeping and, because it was France, it was all right.

In the taxi going back to the Suarez, I told Delight everything — the vaudeville going to Milan with Pam and everyone, Mother alone ... M. Picquot.

‘But it must have been an accident.’ I tried to keep my teeth from chattering. ‘And Norma. And Sylvia. She couldn’t have done it to Sylvia. We know that. She was with you.’

The taxi joggled along at the pace of a broken-winded cart horse. The lights on all the boats moved in the Vieux Port— M. Lopez' boat, Mrs Fellowes’ boat, Onassis’ boat, Nyarchos’ boat, everybody’s goddammed boats — twinkle-twinkled like little stars. Delight was sitting close against me. Suddenly I realized that her arm was trembling.

‘About Sylvia ... I’ve got to tell you now.’ She turned to me and her face seemed to be swaying like the boats in the harbor. ‘Nickie, I lied.’

‘Lied.’

‘That night in Vegas when you were out there standing in the sand and I came to you — it was your Mother who sent me. ‘Mother!’

‘The moment we got back from the party, she called me into her room. She said you had a mad idea she’d killed Sylvia. She couldn’t bear to think of you suffering, she said. Help me. Dearest Delight, help me for Nickie’s sake. Go to him. Tell him I was with you in your room all that time. And she — she was so pitiful, so desperate that finally I said yes.’

She took my hand and clung on to it fiercely.

‘But it wasn’t true. I have no more idea than you have where she was when Sylvia died.’

18

We reached the hotel. I paid the taxi. We got up to the suite. I was so drunk by then that all the other things, the horror, the fury, the shock, weren’t operating properly. Nothing was operating except the champagne.

I remember wandering into the living room with Delight behind me. Then there was the sound of a key in the lock and Mother was sweeping into the room, being glamorous and incomparable.

‘Darlings, how naughty we all are. Up at this hour — and off to London tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

It must have been Delight who said that. Dimly I remembered that we weren’t supposed to be leaving for two more days.

‘Yes, darlings, just the three of us. The others don’t have to hurry. Poor Uncle Hans should have a couple of full days in bed to get over his tummy anyway. But I have to be there. My new dress for the act, my dress for Her Majesty. I’ve got to give poor Mr Cavanagh some time. So beddy-byes, dears. All up and packed and ready to go by ten-thirty.’

I’d been standing with my back to her, struggling against all the things that were far too much for me. Tomorrow ... London ... Just the three of us? Why Delight and me? Because she was going to keep an eye on us, of course. She was going to make sure we didn’t sneak off on our own and get married in spite of her. Intriguer ... Liar ... Mass-murderess.

I whirled around. Now I would tell her ... what? ... how? ... Where to begin?

‘You!’ That’s what came out of the frenzied confusion inside me. ‘You and Monique — trying to bust it all up. So Delight isn’t good enough to be your daughter-in-law. Oh, no, she never married a National Figure. I stand corrected; she never married a cheap little vaudevillian to get a work permit and keep from being kicked out of the ...’

‘Nickie.’ Delight’s hand flew up, covering my mouth. ‘Anny, don’t pay any attention to him. He’s drunk. He couldn’t help it. We ran into someone who ...’

‘Someone!’ I yelled through her hand. ‘Not someone. Roger Renard.’

‘Nickie, shut up, I say. Anny, please, you and I can be sensible even if he can’t. I realize you don’t want me to marry Nickie and I don’t blame you. You’ve got every right to think I’m a phony. But, Anny, I could convince you. I’m sure I could ...’

Suddenly the only thing that mattered to me was a bathroom. I pulled myself away from Delight and ran across the living room. I knew I passed Mother. I knew she threw out her hand.

‘Nickie, my poor sweet Nickie ...’

But I ran on into my bedroom and into my bathroom and slammed the door.

I woke up next morning feeling so ghastly that nothing mattered. Let it all go. To hell with it. We got packed. We said good-bye to Uncle Hans in bed with his tummy, to a grinning Gino and to Pam, who, suddenly, because of what I’d been suspecting about her, seemed the person I loved most in the world. Then we were on the plane to London.

Mother and I sat together. I’d tried desperately not to have it happen, but, of course, it had happened. Delight was somewhere else way up ahead and, as I sat there, dead to the world, Mother started being ‘sweet’.

‘Nickie darling, I’m so glad of this little opportunity for a quiet talk. It was wrong of me to send for Monique. Of course it was. I’m a dreadful, bullying Mother and I know it and I don’t seem to be able to help it. But, Nickie dear, I did want to make sure. I mean — nineteen! But I do see now. I really do. If you honestly want to marry Delight, I won’t dream of interfering. But, dear, you must promise me one thing. I’m going to make Delight promise too. Don’t run off to some dreadful little registry office — so sordid and hopelessly against the law, dear, I’m sure, with you being under age. Just wait, darling, until after the Queen, after the Opening, then we’ll have a divine church ceremony. It’s a promise, dear. Cross my heart and hope to die. A divine wedding in a church.’

She went on and on and I couldn’t bear it because I knew she wasn’t meaning a word of it, I knew it was gall and wormwood to her to have to accept Delight, I knew it was only because she loved me and was terrified that if she didn’t go along with it, she’d lose me. Having her love me, having her giving herself away like that, was the thing I could bear the least. It even somehow took the thrill out of Delight. Why? Did I, deep down inside, hate winning out over Mother? Was I as perverse as that?

But this wasn’t a time for thinking. I wasn’t ever going to think again. I just let her yak and yak and yak, being motherly and affectionate and warm, and every now and then, while I stopped French air hostesses pressing interminable meals on me, I went on saying, Yes, Mother. Okay, Mother. Sure, Mother, until finally we got over the Channel and over some place like Kent and were coming down at London Airport.

Forget it, I told myself as Mother dazzled enormously polite customs’ men. Put it all out of your mind. Marry Delight. That’s what you want. Just marry her at a divine church ceremony with Mother being a divine Mother of the Groom with a string of murders to her credit. Carry on, Nickie, old boy. Make like there never was a M. Picquot or a Norma Delanay or a Sylvia La Mann.

We moved into a huge house, belonging, of course, to some admirer, in Kensington. Mother had intended to go to Claridge’s but some King or something was in her suite so, when this offer came up, she grabbed it. Right away the old rat-race began — cables, flowers, telephone calls, Larry, Vivien, Oliver, Cecil. Why did countries bother to have their own celebrities? Why couldn’t they just settle for one all-purpose group like a U.N. force and throw it in wherever it was needed? Mother had a little talk with Delight about the church ceremony. Delight thought it was fine and sensible and, after all, wasn’t Mother wonderful, which appalled me a bit, but not enough for me to make anything out of it. My spirit was crushed.

Most of the first days were Mother and John Cavanagh. Apparently, it isn’t easy to cook up two 'absolutely divine' gowns, one for the Palladium and one for Elizabeth II, in a matter of minutes. Mother had also found some ‘miraculous’ little man who could help Delight with her French pronunciation for the Trenet song — so, unless I wanted to be on my own, I either had to be watching John Cavanagh’s ladies stick pins in Mother’s hems or be listening to Delight being a relentlessly cute American girl singing a French song to a rehearsal piano.

Most of the time I wanted to be on my own. I just walked around London, which I didn’t know too well, but which seemed to be okay except that they never stopped changing the guard. Once they got a good one, why didn’t they stick to it? And then, all over town were placards announcing ANNY ROOD AND FAMILY AT THE PALLADIUM and the Command Performance of the movie where Mother was going to meet the Queen. Meet the Queen! What would the Queen do if she knew ? What if I was to write her a letter: 'Dear Queen…?’

One morning, when I was trapped in the middle of Trafalgar Square, which is encircled by buses all thundering in the wrong direction and quite impossible to escape from, I bought a picture postcard of the National Gallery and, out of sheer hatred for everything including myself, wrote ‘Meilleurs Voeux’ on it and sent it to Monique.

I’d lost track of the time, but suddenly it became the day before Mother’s birthday and the Presentation to the Queen. That evening, when I got home from my pointless wanderings, I found Ronnie sitting alone in the living room. I’d forgotten the lovesick St Bernard look which, in the last Hollywood days, had permanently crowded out the old Debonair Distinction. There it still was in all its glory, and Ronnie insisted on giving me the full outpouring. He just had to fly over for Mother’s opening. Would Mother be mad? He just couldn’t bear being separated from her any longer. He hadn’t cast anyone else in Ninon, he was still waiting and hoping … Did I think that possibly, conceivably, there might, just might be a chance that Mother ... Sob, groan.

That went on for hours and then Gino arrived from Cannes loaded with all Mother’s bags which, of course, she’d left for him to cope with. Uncle Hans had stayed behind because his tummy still wasn’t well. He was out of his mind not being

able to get to Mother’s birthday (Who cared?) but, old trooperishly, had decided it was more important to get well for the Palladium. Pam was in England but she too was frenzied at not being able to make Mother’s birthday. She'd run into trouble with Tray. Even though Mother had pulled every string in the House of Commons and the House of Lords and in Buckingham Palace to get Tray let off the six-month animal quarantine, there were still formalities and Pam was going to have to spend at least the next twenty-four hours in some appalling government kennel in Essex, boosting Tray’s morale, until they’d finally released him to his breathless public.

Delight came in from her class and Mother came in from yet another fitting, ecstatically announcing that her Elizabeth II R dress would definitely be ready the next morning. ‘It’s divine, dears — rich but severe, positively severe.’ She seemed

to have forgotten all about that ‘Go-go-we-must-never-see-each-other-again’ routine with Ronnie because she greeted him with little cries and clutches and kisses and talked about a lovely little party for thirty which she was going to give for her birthday just before the Queen. Then we all, in a dreadful group, went to a play and had dinner at the Caprice where, inevitably, Larry, Vivien, Cecil, etcetera etcetera.

Delight adored it. At some point in the middle of it all, I came out of my torpor and realized that she was wallowing. Oh, God, I thought, and later, when I was lying in bed, not sleeping, I suddenly saw my married life stretching ahead with Delight being more and more of a dynamo, more and more of a success, more and more of a celebrity, more and more of a — Mother.

No, I said. Bury that thought, Nickie, destroy it, kill it.

I got up early the next morning. I don’t know why, but there I was awake, and being in bed was worse than anything else. I went into the living-room. Gino was up ahead of me. He was arranging Mother's birthday presents on a table by the window — his present, Pam’s present, Uncle Hans’ present, everyone’s present. It dawned on me that I hadn’t bought her anything. For one mad moment I decided to hell with it. At least not buying her anything would be a gesture, something to express the excruciating clashes inside me.

But Gino said, ‘Okay, kid, where’s your present?’

‘I haven’t got one.’

‘Haven’t got one?’

‘I’m getting it this morning,’ I heard myself saying. ‘There’s plenty of time. She’s not going to open them until this evening at the party anyway.’

The terrible party for thirty dear, dear friends, from which she’d sweep in her glory into the arms of Elizabeth II R! Gino was watching me with affectionate perplexity.

‘What’s the matter with you anyways, kid? You sick?’

‘I’m all right.’

‘Then, for Pete’s sake, go buy your present.’

So I dressed and left with Delight, who had to be at her French gentleman’s in a place called St John’s Wood by nine-thirty. As we went out, three women whom I recognized from John Cavanagh’s emerged from a taxi with a package. The Elizabeth II R dress? I looked at them sourly. What was I going to buy for Mother? What possibly could anyone give Mother? An automatic pusher which she could use when her arms got tired from precipitating people over stair-rails?

It seemed for ever since I’d been alone with Delight. St John’s Wood, apparently, was way out in the sticks and she’d become a whiz, she said, at the subway. As we plunged into a main street which was loused up by people with bowler hats and umbrellas rushing to work, she started chattering about her song and the Opening and the party and Mother Meets the Queen and suddenly, in the middle of it all, I found I wasn’t with it, not even part of the way.

‘Darling, it is rather wonderful, isn’t it?’

She’d snitched that word from Mother. Every other word was ‘darling’ now. I glowered.

‘Sometimes I still can’t quite believe it. Cannes…London… And, darling, I didn’t tell you. Last night Anny promised to take me to John Cavanagh for the wedding-gown.’

We reached the subway and started down the steps with all the thousands of bowler hats and umbrellas and British stenographers. I was going to Bond Street because that was the place for presents, Delight said. She pushed ahead of me, put pennies in odd machines and got us the right tickets. Then we were squeezing past the barrier, sardines among sardines, going down an escalator.

‘Nickie, darling.’

‘Yes.’

Her red pocket-book was jammed uncomfortably into my ribs. ‘What’s the matter? You’re not still brooding about ...’

‘For God’s sake.’

‘But, Nickie, even if she did ...’

‘If!’

‘Darling, I should have said this before. You’ve got to settle for it. It’s done; it’s over. There isn’t going to be any trouble and it’s none of your business anyway. Besides, in spite of it all, She’s wonderful.’

We were pushed off the bottom of the escalator by the mob coining down behind us. Then we were struggling along a passage towards the platform. Delight was separated from me; then she got back to me and clung on to my arm, the red pocket-book digging into me again.

‘Darling, please, you’ve got to be sensible. She is wonderful, whatever you say. We had a talk. I never told you.’

‘A talk?’

‘That night in Cannes after you’d gone to bed. You’d blurted that out about the marriage and Roger Renard. She’s no fool. She guessed what had happened. Nickie, she swears M. Picquot was an accident; that they were all accidents. And even if we don’t believe her — look how good she’s being to us. She was marvelous that night. After we’d talked, she admitted she’d been wrong to suspect me. Darling, she said, I see it all now. We got off on the wrong foot simply because we’re so much alike. So ...’

Suddenly that was all I could take. For days it had been there, but for days I’d refused to admit it. Now there it was. I didn’t love this girl. I didn’t even like her. What had happened? How conceivably had we reached the point of the wedding-gown, the divine church ceremony, the …’

We were on the platform, standing right on its edge, squeezed on all sides by throngs of natives. I could hear the train roaring out of the tunnel towards us. I felt panic, a terrible claustrophobia. And it wasn’t just the people pushing all around us, it was Delight. The wedding-gown ... the church ceremony ... I couldn’t bear another second of it.

The train was roaring nearer. I could see its red nose coming out of the tunnel. I swung away from Delight and started clawing my way backwards.

‘Nickie.’

I heard her voice but I didn’t care. I pushed on blindly through the people. I got to the back of the platform. I stumbled over a bench. I got myself together again and pressed on against the crowd back towards the entrance. I had reached it when I heard the scream. It wasn’t really a scream — it was more than that, a terrible, collective gasp and, almost instantly, a rending sound of brakes.

I turned. I didn’t really go back of my own accord. I went back because there was nothing else to do, everyone was pushing, scrambling in that direction. I was in the middle of it, umbrellas, attaché cases, pipes, elbows.

‘What is it?’

‘What ‘appened?’

I was right on the edge of the platform then, right where Delight had been, right where the head of the train was, motionless now, with a nightmare of faces pressed inside against the window, looking out.

A woman screamed. Then another woman screamed. And then one voice, for some reason, sorted itself out from the jungle noises as if it was speaking to me. It wasn’t, of course.

‘Gorblimey,’ it said. ‘A girl ... pushed off the platform in the crush ... right under the train. ... God almighty, what a mess ... no, ‘ilda, no. Don’t you look now. Don’t you look.’

But I looked. And there, down on the tracks, I saw Delight’s red pocket-book — and a hand.

19

The crowd, I thought. Anyone could have followed us in the crowd. Anyone ... Mother. ... The thought wasn’t coherent, it was hardly a thought at all and it was swallowed up in the chaos of feeling inside me, just as I was swallowed up, shoved, jostled further and further away from The Place. The police would come. I would have to wait. Why? Because I’d been with Delight. But who in that rush-hour mob would have noticed that I’d been with Delight? I hadn’t been with her anyway, not when — when …

An eddy in the mob was twisting me against the current back towards the exit. Mother! The thought or the feeling whatever it was — surged up again, obliterating everything else. I must get to Mother. Why? For God’s sake, what do you want with her anymore? How could you possibly face…? But it was there, the way it always had been in a crisis ever since I could remember.

Get to Mother.

I was squashed against the tiled concave wall next to a poster saying ANNY ROOD AND FAMILY AT THE PALLADIUM. I pushed with all my strength and was shot backwards and out by the exit into the passage. Everyone was streaming down towards the train; no one was streaming out. There was a little empty track along the wall. I ran to the up-escalator, out on to the street, dodging and ducking, back to our side-street and the house.

I took out my key. I tried to get it into the lock. There’d never been two things less intended for each other. Then, somehow, the key was in place and I was opening the door and I could hear Mother’s voice.

I went into the living-room. There was Mother. She was wearing a pink housecoat, pacing agitatedly up and down.

The Elizabeth II R dress was spread over a table and three women were crowding around it.

‘It’s always the same,’ Mother was thundering, deep in her Scourge of the Haute Couture characterization. ‘Wherever I go — Balmain, Balenciaga, Dior. Always at the last minute some disaster. You poor dears, I know it isn’t your fault, but ...’ She saw me then. ‘Nickie, a terrible crease, right under the left arm.’

I’d forgotten the three women who’d been arriving when Delight and I left. As I stood looking at them, I could feel the relief from tension starting way down inside me.

‘Mother,’ I said. ‘These ladies — they’ve been here all the time?’

‘All what time, darling? They’ve only been here since you and Delight left. Just time enough for me to try on the dress and find …’

The relief was so violent that it was actually painful. ‘Mother. Can you please — somewhere alone . ‘

‘But, Nickie ...’

‘Please.’

Dimly I was aware that the great eagle eyes under the enormous lashes were taking me in for the first time. Then they swooped to the women.

‘I’ll be back in a minute, dears. Just carry on.’

She was slipping her arm through mine. We went upstairs to her bedroom. She shut the door behind us.

‘Nickie, darling, what is it? If you knew how you looked …’

I was pouring it out then and Mother was firing sharp astounded questions.

‘But the police ...’

‘I didn’t wait.’

‘You didn’t wait? But — why?’

I looked at her and it was miraculously all right. I knew I could say it.

‘I thought you’d pushed her.’

‘Oh, Nickie.’ I was sitting on the edge of her bed. She dropped down next to me and folded her arms around me. ‘What things you’ve been thinking. My poor sweet darling.’

‘But, Mother, it seemed …’

‘Seemed, seemed, seemed. Boys — what can you do about them? But listen, Nickie — listen to me. You’ll think this is cold blooded, I know you will, but later you’ll realize I’m right to tell you now. How it happened in the subway, I can’t imagine, I can’t conceive. But, darling, that was a terrible girl.’

Her arms, around me, were deliciously warm and steadying.

‘Appalling, dear — worse than Sylvia La Mann. Listen, that night in Cannes, when you were drunk, after you’d talked to Roger Renard, Delight and I had a talk. You can’t imagine what she was like. Stripped — positively stripped of all decency. She told me that, at Norma’s funeral, the editor of Bare had offered her thousands of dollars to get some scandal on me. She said that if I didn’t let her marry you, she’d send Bare enough evidence to prove I’d murdered M. Picquot and Norma and Sylvia. It was crazy, of course. I’ve always been sure it was an accident with M. Picquot and with Norma and with Sylvia. That’s the only way to think without driving yourself insane. But ... how could I fight her? I was at her mercy. Oh, darling, I had to give in.’

My thoughts were floating in every known direction like heat-dazed butterflies on a summer afternoon. Mother going on being Mother! Mother making herself believe, against all the evidence, that three murders were three accidents just because that way life was more comfortable! Who but Mother had a mind which operated like that? But I wasn’t distrusting her any more. All that was over. Incredible as it might once have seemed, I knew Delight had been what Mother was saying she had been. Hadn’t I sensed it at the beginning, before whatever it was — the green eyes? the red hair? — had got me all screwed up?

‘Nickie dear, you must think I was a monster, sacrificing my own son on the altar to save myself from scandal. But I hadn’t given up. I was determined to think out a counterattack, and I would have done. ... But, dear, at least I managed a little bargain. To protect us for the future, I ...’

Mother got up from the bed, swept over to her dressing-table, took a piece of paper from her jewel box and brought it to me.

‘I made her write this. I knew it would come in handy some day. Here, dear — read it.’

I looked at the note, written in Delight’s familiar, round handwriting.

I have threatened to sell information to Bare Magazine exposing Anny Rood as the murderer of M. Picquot, Norma Delanay and Sylvia La Mann unless she lets me marry her son. I want to marry him purely for ambition. I do not love him. Once the marriage has taken place, I swear I will keep all I know to myself.

Delight Schmidt

I sat looking at it, looking at myself too. There was a tap on the door and one of the John Cavanagh ladies called, ‘Miss Rood, there’s a telegram.’

‘Coming, dear.’

Mother swirled away from me to the door, opened it, took the telegram and came back to me, slitting the envelope. I wasn’t really thinking about her. I wasn’t thinking about anything. I was just feeling that, in spite of everything, I was going to be all right eventually.

Mother’s voice made me look up. She was standing gazing at the telegram and her face, suddenly, was all gaunt, unrelieved bone-structure.

‘Mother, what is it?’

‘Oh, Nickie.’

For a moment she seemed to be dwindling in front of me, shriveling, getting drained of life like that woman in Lost Horizons who suddenly got to be a hundred years old. But it was only for a moment, then she was back again being Mother. She dropped the telegram on the bed and was hurrying out of the room.

I sat looking at the telegram lying beside me and somehow, looking at it, whatever it was, brought all the horrid realities back. Mother was Mother. Mother could go on kidding herself that three murders were three accidents. Three murders? No, four murders. But I couldn’t. Someone had killed those people. Someone …

I picked up the telegram and it was as if my thoughts, by some muddle in time, had come before the thing which was to inspire them, because the telegram, sent from a Post Office only a couple of blocks away, said:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAREST ANNY OPEN MY PRESENT NOW

YOUR LOVING HUSBAND

Husband! There it was. The whole pattern was suddenly in place. Not Mother. But someone who had been with Mother in the old days, who had been there in the backroom when M. Picquot had rejected her. Someone who had been willing to marry her, not as a real marriage, but as a token marriage for her to get her work permit, someone then who must have adored her, worshipped her, been determined that, M. Picquot or no, Norma or no, Sylvia or no, Delight or no, Mother would always be safe, forging ahead up, up, up to those perilous pinnacles which, for Mother, were ‘home’.

Why hadn’t it come to me when I’d discovered that the ‘National Figure’ husband had just been one of Mother’s myths? Why hadn’t I realized that the ‘cheap little vaudevillain’, whom Mother would never divorce, had to be someone close to her, someone in our lives, someone with whom a marriage, exposed to the world, would have caused, not a lovely juicy scandal, but a silly ridiculous little scandal which would have had Mother laughed off her glamour throne?

The vaudevillian ... The man who, having fulfilled his function, had been ruthlessly abandoned, the man who, by accident, ten years ago, had been found again and who — Mother being Mother for all her egomania — had been loyally absorbed back into the group.

The man ... the only man ... (ANNY ROOD SECRETLY MARRIED TO HER OWN CHAUFFEUR).

Gino!

Mother came back into the room. She was carrying one of the birthday packages, a small package wrapped in gold paper with a terrible red ribbon bow. She didn’t come to the bed. She hardly seemed to know I was there. She sat down in a chair by the vanity and started ripping off the paper. A box emerged. She tugged off the lid. She brought out, not an object, but a letter. And, as she pulled the sheets out of the envelope and looked at them, she gave a strangled little gasp.

I watched her trying to read. It was pitiful because she was too far gone to remember about her reading glasses. She was holding the sheets near and then away at arms’ length and then near again. I jumped up from the bed, ran to the vanity, got the glasses and handed them to her.

She took them, without a word, and put them on. Then she started to read.

I knew she wanted to pretend she was alone. I knew that at the moment I had not reality for her at all. I just sat on the bed, trying not to look at her much, trying to think of other things. What things? Monique?

Eventually her voice brought me back.

‘Nickie.’

I turned on the bed. She was just sitting with the pages of the letter in her lap. I crossed to her.

‘Mother.’

She looked up at me. Behind the glasses the huge swooning legendary eyes were different from any way I’d ever seen them before. They were just any woman’s eyes, the eyes of a woman who hadn’t learnt that eyes, like waistlines, were things to be disciplined.

‘Oh, Nickie ... I’ve always known. I see that now. All these years I’ve been deceiving myself because I knew if I faced it, I’d have to face the fact that my whole career has been based on ... based on ...’

‘Do you want me to read it?’

She took off her glasses. Slowly her hands went down and gathered up the sheets and gave them to me.

I took them over to the bed. Because I knew so much already, because, really, it had all been guessed, I found myself skimming, noticing a fact here, a fact there.

Dearest Anny,

I’m writing this because a time may come — I don’t think it will though — when the police may have to read it. If it wasn’t for that I would have held my peace. But I can’t because there’s still one more job to be done and I can’t be sure how it will turn out....

Anny, dear wonderful Anny, I’ll never know if you secretly guessed that I pushed M. Picquot. You knew I was in the other room with Nickie, you knew there was a second door out to the landing, you must have known I’d heard him destroying your one big chance. But — well, we never talked about it and it was better that way. My love wouldn’t have amounted to much if I’d made you share my guilt. So there it was and Hollywood came and your great success and it all seemed all right for ever. ... There was always Norma, of course. It was obvious that Roger Renard had told her enough to make her suspicious, but that didn’t seem to matter — until that night. And then, at Ronnie’s pool house, when she turned on you — suddenly I saw she could ruin you. That’s why I followed when you went back to the house, that’s why I listened outside her door and, when I heard her screaming at you that she was going to denounce you as the murderer of M. Picquot, I knew it would be a disaster. What happened later just happened. You left. She came stumbling after you. She didn’t even see me. Almost before I’d realized what I was doing, the temptation was too strong to resist and I’d pushed. ... Later it was easy to pretend that the two of us had stayed on at the pool house together. ... He, loving you too, suspecting whatever he suspected, wasn’t going to say anything...

My eyes, fascinated yet fickle, ran on, rejecting, picking up again.

. . . of course, killing Norma didn’t end it because of Sylvia ... I knew, there in Sylvia’s suite at the Tamberlaine, that it would have to be done again. And suddenly there was everything to help me — the reducing salts, the regular bath at five-thirty, her terror of Tray. There was only one obstacle, the original of the letter, and then even that was all right because, before she took the photostat out of her pocket-book, I saw her hand go up to her bosom and I was sure that Sylvia, being Sylvia, trusting no one, had the original page right there in her brassière. ... It couldn’t have been more simple. Even the key was in the door. As we left, I put it in my pocket. Then, later, when you were all resting, it was easy to slip over with Tray and let myself in. She was in the tub and, yes, there on the stool beside her with the bathrobe and the brassière was the letter. Tray worked almost too well ... hysteria at first and then a total collapse ... for all I know she was dead before I pushed her head under the water. ... That was it, then, except what to do with the letter. I was pretty sure you would be clever enough to have Steve take care of everything, but I knew you’d have no peace as long as the letter was missing. ... All I could think of was to slip it into your jewel box so at least you’d find it and know it was safe. . . .

Once again it all seemed to be over, but it wasn’t, was it, because of Delight? It was lucky you told me about your talk, lucky you showed me that absurd little paper you’d made her sign. I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I knew it would destroy you to have to sacrifice Nickie like that. I knew then that we’d never be safe so long as Delight was in existence. ... But even this seems simple. I can pretend to stay behind here and then, when the others leave, I can fly to London, wait for my chance - what will it be? Under a bus, perhaps? A crowded underground train at rush hour? But I will wait and my chance will come and I’ll have a flight reserved back to France... I am wrapping this as a birthday present to be taken to you. Once I’ve been successful, I’ll send you a telegram. And then, Anny, dearest Anny, you know there is only one possible end. After this you will never be able to look at me again and why, after all these years of being tied to me, shouldn’t you have your freedom when you love Ronnie Light, when you deserve everything that’s wonderful, when ... So, Anny dear, the day after the telegram comes, you’ll see in the papers. ... In some obscure little hotel in the Var, an elderly gentleman with a bad tummy will have taken an overdose of sleeping pills. ... The end, Anny dear, of a rather peculiar life but a life which, at least, was dedicated.

Good-bye, dear. God bless you.

HANS

I sat looking down at the final page, clutching it.

Mother was at my side. I hadn’t heard her come over, didn’t know she was there until she said,

‘It seemed better, dear — calling him Uncle. The marriage was never a real one, you know that. It was just for my papers when I was down and out, desperate, quite desperate. But he’d been so good, so faithful, he loved me so much. I couldn’t leave him behind with his career finished, with nowhere to turn. I had to take care of him. It was the least I could do. Uncle Hans. I’d hardly thought about that part of it at all until the reporters were crowding on to the boat in New York. Miss Rood, who is the gentleman with you? they asked. And I turned to Hans and I said, Oh, that’s my uncle — my Uncle Hans.’

She dropped down on to the bed next to me. She was clinging desperately to my hand. ‘Nickie, Nickie, what are we going to do? The flight back to France ... the little hotel in the Var ... the sleeping pills. ... Oh, poor, poor Uncle Hans, we must stop him.’

As I looked at her face, stricken, quite out of control, I knew for the first time that I was the stronger. Is this, I wondered dimly, what it feels like to have a mother complex coming to its end?

‘We mustn’t stop him, Mother. Don’t you see? There’s no point in it for him unless you let him finish it his way. Mother darling, it’s all going to be all right. The police will ask questions about Delight, but it’ll just end up as a rush-hour accident on the subway. And then you’ll be able to start a new life. Marry Ronnie if you want to — even play Ninon…’

But Mother had thrown herself down on the bed. She was lying with her face buried against the pink pillows, sobbing without hope. Okay, I thought. Let her sob. Let her get it over with. I lay down next to her, letting my hand rest lightly on her shoulder. I’ve always loved Mother’s beds. They’re so soft, so voluptuous. Gradually, as I lay there, listening to her sobbing, knowing that I was helping her just by being near her, the insidious thought stirred: No more Anny Rood And Family. Mother would go indomitably onward and upward, onward and upward. Of course she would. But there could be no more And Family, no more bucks and wings, no more women begging for my autograph.

Freedom. The word formed itself in my mind, a tiny seed which soon, when the shock was over, would grow and grow. Freedom and peace — peace to get to be twenty instead of nineteen, peace to love Mother for the wonder phenomenon she was, with no more growing-pain complications, freedom to become a Parisian writer again under the beautifully inspirational inspiration of Monique.

My hand was still on Mother’s shoulder. She was still sobbing. It was amazing how I felt — the new me, positive, protective, mature.

‘Mother darling, it’ll be all right.’

‘No, Nickie, no.’

‘You never needed anybody. Don’t you see? If there’d never been a M. Picquot, never been an Uncle Hans, it would have been the same. You’d always have got to the top. It isn’t what other people did for you. It’s you.’

‘But, Nickie, Uncle Hans, poor Uncle Hans ...’

‘Would he want you to be lying there — giving up?’ I found I could handle her now the way I’d never been able to before. This new love was a love which could see her exactly as she was without losing any of its tenderness. ‘Mother dear, think how much there is to be done. You’ll have to call the Palladium and cancel the engagement. Or postpone it, perhaps. Yes, why don’t you postpone it? You could do Ninon for Ronnie first and then come back to the Palladium as a solo act. You never needed us. You know you didn’t. As a solo you’d be even more sensational.’

Her head shifted slightly on the pillows, and the sobbing was a little less.

‘And there’s not only the Palladium, Mother. There’s your birthday party. All your dear friends. They’ll be here in a couple of hours. Are you sure you’ve got everything ready? And what about the sewing women?’

‘The sewing women!’ The right chord had been struck. Almost briskly Mother sat up. ‘Oh, Nickie, those poor, dear, patient sewing women.’

Nothing had happened to her face, of course. It was as splendidly undamaged as ever. With a forlorn little smile, she threw her arms around me.

‘Oh, Nickie, dear, dear Nickie.’

‘They’ll have fixed the crease by now.’

‘Yes, yes. I’m sure. Oh, Nickie, I wasn’t beastly to them, was I?’ She was looking at me from huge, wide eyes — little girl’s eyes, really. ‘Darling, I do hate to be beastly. You know that, don’t you? But this is so important. Being Presented. Such a great honor. One simply must rise to the occasion.’

She got up from the bed then and drew herself up as if already in her mind there was the first hush, the first rustle which heralded the arrival of Elizabeth II R. She wasn’t quite The One, The Only, but she would be when the time came.

There was no doubt about that now.

FIN

PATRICK QUENTIN

Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (19 March 1912 – 26 July 1987), Richard Wilson Webb (August 1901 – December 1966), Martha Mott Kelley (30 April 1906 – 2005) and Mary Louise White Aswell (3 June 1902 – 24 December 1984) wrote detective fiction. In some foreign countries their books have been published under the variant Quentin Patrick. Most of the stories were written by Webb and Wheeler in collaboration, or by Wheeler alone. Their most famous creation is the amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

In 1931 Richard Wilson Webb (born in 1901 in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, an Englishman working for a pharmaceutical company in Philadelphia) and Martha Mott Kelley collaborated on the detective novel Cottage Sinister. Kelley was known as Patsy (Patsy Kelly was a well-known character actress of that era) and Webb as Rick, so they created the pseudonym Q. Patrick by combining their nicknames—adding the Q "because it was unusual".

Webb's and Kelley's literary partnership ended with Kelley's marriage to Stephen Wilson. Webb continued to write under the Q. Patrick name, while looking for a new writing partner. Although he wrote two novels with the journalist and Harper's Bazaar editor Mary Louise Aswell, he would find his permanent collaborator in Hugh Wheeler, a Londoner who had moved to the US in 1934.

Wheeler's and Webb's first collaboration was published in 1936. That same year, they introduced two new pseudonyms: Murder Gone to Earth, the first novel featuring Dr. Westlake, was credited to Jonathan Stagge, a name they would continue to use for the rest of the Westlake series. A Puzzle for Fools introduced Peter Duluth and was signed Patrick Quentin. This would become their primary and most famous pen name, even though they also continued to use Q. Patrick until the end of their collaboration (particularly for Inspector Trant stories).

In the late 1940s, Webb's contributions gradually decreased due to health problems. From the 1950s and on, Wheeler continued writing as Patrick Quentin on his own, and also had one book published under his own name. In the 1960s and '70s, Wheeler achieved success as a playwright and librettist, and his output as Quentin Patrick slowed and then ceased altogether after 1965. However, Wheeler did write the book for the 1979 musical Sweeney Todd about a fictional London mass murderer, showing he had not altogether abandoned the genre.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

As Patrick Quentin

- A Puzzle For Fools (1936)

- Puzzle For Players (1938)

- Puzzle For Puppets (1944)

- Puzzle For Wantons (1945) aka Slay the Loose Ladies

- Puzzle For Fiends (1946) aka Love Is a Deadly Weapon

- Puzzle For Pilgrims (1947) aka The Fate of the Immodest Blonde

- Run To Death (1948)

- The Follower (1950)

- Black Widow (1952) aka Fatal Woman

- My Son, the Murderer (1954) aka the Wife of Ronald Sheldon

- The Man With Two Wives (1955)

- The Man in the Net (1956)

- Suspicious Circumstances (1957)

- Shadow of Guilt (1959)

- The Green-Eyed Monster (1960)

- The Ordeal of Mrs Snow (1961), short stories

- Family Skeletons (1965)

As Q Patrick

- Cottage Sinister (1931)

- Murder at the Women's City Club (1932) aka Death in the Dovecote

- SS Murder (1933)

- Murder at the 'Varsity (1933) aka Murder at Cambridge

- The Grindle Nightmare (1935) aka Darker Grows the Valley

- Death Goes To School (1936)

- Death For Dear Clara (1937)

- The File on Fenton and Farr (1938)

- The File on Claudia Cragge (1938)

- Death and the Maiden (1939)

- Return To the Scene (1941) aka Death in Bermuda

- Danger Next Door (1952)

As Jonathan Stagge

- The Dogs Do Bark (1936) aka Murder Gone To Earth

- Murder by Prescription (1938) aka Murder or Mercy?

- The Stars Spell Death (1939) aka Murder in the Stars

- Turn of the Table (1940) aka Funeral For Five

- The Yellow Taxi (1942) aka Call a Hearse

- The Scarlet Circle (1943) aka Light From a Lantern

- Death, My Darling Daughters (1945) aka Death and the Dear Girls

- Death's Old Sweet Song (1946)

- The Three Fears (1949)

As Hugh Wheeler

- The Crippled Muse (1951)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

About Patrick Quentin

Bibliography